Thursday, July 30, 2009

Power Points - Introducing Packaging

Ahh yes when I think of powerpoints the first thing that comes to mind is the never ending slides jammed with information that pretty much make you fall off your seat snoring! Well powerpoints definitely do not have to be that way and yes they can be an effective, easy tool to incorporate withing your lesson frameworks whether it be an assessable item or merely a tool to engage the learners within a particular topic. After much deliberation as to how this could be used as a teacher tool to engage the learners I thought of a way to introduce the topic of packaging that the students would be participating in this term. Although this has already been introduced to the students I though this could be an easy tool to the students to refer back to and refresh their minds on what will be happening.
At the moment the students are completing a unit on packaging and their task is to create a nutritious biscuit for the tuck shop and create its packaging. The class who has the best tasting nutritious biscuit and packaging will be selling their biscuits at the tuck shop. So a powerpoint would also be a fantastic tool to 'sell' their biscuit (although we must also work on the taste but first impressions always last!).

On the powerpoint (introduce and engage) the first slide will hold a video clip of the tuck shop lady issuing an inter class challenge to see who could create the perfect biscuit and packaging. The other slides would not only hold effective animations, entrances, and hyperlinks to specific sites to provide students with examples and pictures of biscuits,recipes and packaging but would also contain informative and useful information to assist them with their task. This use of the etool relates effectively to Kearsley and Schneiderman's (1999) as it "relates to a real world authentic problem" e.g. First slide presenting the tuck shops problem and competition, the biscuit, packaging and presentation powerpoint will then be 'created' and the solution will then be 'donated' to the judges and the rest of the school (their biscuits and packaging).

Overall the use of powerpoints is an effective tool to not only engage students but to enhance their knowledge, understanding and skills for a particular task. It is an easy and fun program to navigate around and has many talents such as charts, clip art, music, narration, video clips and many more to enhance the presentation and make it shine (ACT Media Ltd, 2009).

ACT Media Ltd. (2009). Power Point in the Classroom. Retrieved July 28, 2009, from http://www.actden.com/pp/index.htm

Kearsley, G. & Schneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Retrieved July 28, 2009, from http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm

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