Thanks to all who responded with suggestions for teaching good
Powerpoint skills to 6th graders and their teacher. Here is a summary.
Keep them coming, if there are new and different suggestions, I will
post another hit. Heidi Escobar
My original post was:
> I am working with a 6th grade teacher who doesn't know Powerpoint, but
would like to learn it and to have her students create a Powerpoint
presentation for their Social Studies Project. Has anyone got advice
regarding good introductory materials, the length of presentation that
we could expect 6th graders to handle, good rules of thumb to give the
kids, etc? Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks! I will post a hit
with replies.
Heidi Escobar, Syracuse University Library Student, temporarily working
with Willow Field Elementary School, Liverpool, NY, Hescobar@syr.edu.
>
The suggestions:
Have a look at some of the links at:
http://www.shambles.net/pages/school/PowerP/
http://www.shambles.net/pages/school/present/
These are links from a much larger ICT page at
http://www.shambles.net/ict/ ... where you'll also find links to some
other relevant Schemes of Work related to 'presentations'
One SLMS followed these steps with 5th graders:
Demonstrate on white board, allow students to "play" and explore the
program with practice Powerpoints, then do research and complete final
Powerpoint.
It was recommended that students create a "storyboard" or plan of their
slides before they get onto the computer. In other words, don't just
sit down and start to create. Also, have the students put all of the
content (information) on the slides before adding a background and
movement and sound. Teach them to layer. That is, first create the
slides with the information, and then select a background that all the
slides will share, then select the slide transitions, then select the
way the info will come onto each slide, and only at the end add sounds.
That way they concentrate on the information and add the bells and
whistles later.
Keeping the focus on communicating ideas is essential. Kids will, if
given the choice, spend minimal time interacting with information
(collecting, organizing and interpreting it) and the bulk of their time
packaging it (fonts, images, transitions, etc.) So many projects turn
out to be "Power Pointless".
Set limits as to number of slides and set criteria for content and
special effects.
There is a Great book called Point Power for Teacher put out by Tom
Snyder Productions. It has simple activities to teach kids how to use
the program and is great for teachers beginning this program as well.
The best advice I've heard for beginners: teach the students to enter
all their text in the outline mode AND after that is done, go back and
add the bells and whistles. That way, they don't get hung up on special
effects and not get all the necessary content in first.
Check out this website. I thought it was pretty good. There's
also one for Excel and Word.
http://www.wcu.edu/ccenter_inf/CatOnline/MSPP/index.html
One very important thing is for both the teacher
and the students to see a model Ppt. presentation.
Our students tend to make the Ppt. a research paper on
slides, rather than a visual aid for what is actually
an oral presentation. The teachers, who may not
know any better, accept these.
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