Digital Blog Post #H

Creating and Sharing Information with Multimedia Technologies, Chapter 9

I wanted to open this week's blog post by discussing PowerPoint, mainly because there are several pages in the textbook that discuss the pros and cons of PowerPoint and I have my own feelings towards this program. The second reason I wanted to highlight PowerPoint is simply because I have had several classes where this program has been used over and over and its mastery is a virtual requirement for success - even if there are better programs available.
While PowerPoint is relatively easy to use, "user-friendly", I find this to be true only because it has very limited creative options. Although there are a number of ready-made templates and ease of uploading images and writing text, there does not seem to be much more to the program. It is crucial, particularly in today's digital age, that technology continues to advance, to grow, to match the creative capabilities of the user. Here is a fairly typical example of what PowerPoint can do and below that is a simple presentation made on PowToon.

PowerPoint presentation by Nicole Weeks 2015

As you can see, there are other options for students to chose from besides PowerPoint, which has, in my opinion, outlived its usefulness by failing to grow and expand. This is not to say that PowerPoint has no place in the classroom. Teachers who need to put together something in a hurry may benefit from it's ease of use, but for engaging students, alternatives are available and more interesting. As the textbook says, "Make visual presentations interactive, varied, and memorable" (Maloy).

The next section I'd like to discuss this week is "Photo Taking ... by Students" (Maloy).  As a future educator, I am already very excited at the prospect of asking my students to take a group of pictures on their cameras or phones over the weekend and then upload them to a community site so we can use them as the subject for short essays or creative writing shorts in class. I think that when a student has the "power" to add to a lesson plan, they take much more away from it in the long term. Even as an adult, I would much rather chose to write about a picture I took myself and I identify with, something I have a personal connection to and have memories about, than write about a random prompt someone else has selected for m!. Impromptu writing can still apply with this digital tool because I can ask my students to write a poem about another student's picture instead of their own, or ask them to blindly point at the smartboard as images scroll. This still allows them to have some version of control over their work because they had a hand in there somewhere. Giving the student a bit of power over what they do with their time is a tool we can and should use as educators. After all, educating should not be a power struggle. It should always be a give and receive set of actions.

Pixabay.com by Coffee

In addition to photo taking, the textbook talks about digital storytelling and digital art making. I am very excited about this section of the chapter as well because some of the most beautiful prose ever written in history have consisted of just a few short lines tied together by the perfect image to support it. Some people are not particularly gifted writers, and if I am not able to draw out a literary genius in a student then perhaps I can draw out an artistically inclined one...  The ability to use digital media in artistic ways with the use of photoshop or even just YouTube podcasts has actually become a career for many people now. The ability to transform a picture into a masterpiece or to amuse an audience with your wit or sense of humor is no longer a hobby, but it can be a lucrative profession. Teaching young people to plan out, edit, and execute projects via digital media is something that can be truly beneficial! Not only can digital art making be a creative process for a student or preparation for internet fame, but it can be a way to connect students with subject material that they are required to learn. A fun project idea would be to ask students to read excerpts from a classic novel and then design a cover for the book, or ask students to "improve" on classically famous paintings or sculptures. There is no end to personalizing a student's learning experience with technology. We just have to be continually growing ourselves as educators in order to do so.



Resources:

Background Image Credit to John LeMasney on flickr.com uploaded on March 17, 2010 

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.