The Edublogs Magazine » Blogging Teachers

Teaching Technology Takes Kids Farther: PowerPoint

Damien Riley — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:25:33 +0000

The greatest wisdom I’ve heard in my career was from my Master Teacher, Anthony Tebelskis:

The secret of good teaching is taking kids from the concrete to the abstract.

In other words: Making the hard stuff easy.

Since then, over 10 years have passed and I’ve learned several ways to make that happen. Along with with crucial strategies, I use several “tech toys” in my fourth grade classroom, specifically:

PowerPoint
A platform visual presenter
Blogs for students
Moodle software

This is the first in a series of four articles sharing how I’ve used technology to take my students farther than traditional means. I will be including actual samples of my work which you are free to download and use, or make your own.

PowerPoint in the Classroom

Microsoft’s PowerPoint is a powerful tool to use within the classroom. It makes abstract concepts more comprehensible than traditional teaching tools.

Applies real life photos and videos to the concepts being taught, better imprinting memory.
Animation and video help show importance and relevance of what is being taught.
Vivid colorful slides as opposed to traditional black and white handouts.
Digital slides replace the chalkboard or white-board with something much more exciting.
Templates are easy to develop and can be changed quickly with each new lesson objective.
Easy references for children to refer back to the slide.
Frees the teacher from the front of the classroom, moving and engaging learners around the room.

Recently in my fourth grade class in the subject of Language Arts, I first introduced the students to the objective of the lesson with a PowerPoint slide that states clearly what we are about to learn:

Today, we will apply knowledge of synonyms, and antonyms to determine the meaning of words and phrases.

The slide features the words, with definition of key terminology, and incorporates visual images that represent the symbolism of the terms. The two images represent “electricity” which visually introduces background knowledge of dams and electrical towers. These images will later help illustrate synonyms and antonyms in the slide show.

I use the Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) strategy in my classes, a technique that was developed by Dr. Sylvia Ybarra and a company called Data Works. It has revolutionized my class’ scores and it works seamlessly with PowerPoint. It is similar to to the traditional lesson plan steps but some other key elements are added. Each part of the lesson is distinct step, like a slide:

Learning Objective
Activate Prior Knowledge
Importance
Concept Development
Skill Development
Guided Practice
Closure
Independent Practice

The next slide shows how the students already know something about the material. This is referred to in EDI as “Activate Prior Knowledge.” The students show they understand what “drought” means based on the idea of a dam in a desert. From here we can teach the students that there are other ways to determine the meaning of unknown words through understanding synonyms and antonyms. This step uses the concept of “scaffolding” or connecting what is known with what is unknown.

Students appreciate the ability to refer back to the slide when asked a question. In addition, they remember the visuals and make connections for more quickly through the presentation than they ever did with traditional “teach from the front” methods. As a teacher, I like the visual engagement as well as the way I can travel throughout the room with a remote. This keeps all the kids on their toes and paying attention.

Integrating PowerPoint Into the Classroom

To incorporate Microsoft’s PowerPoint or a similar slide show program into your classroom, you require a laptop or computer with the software installed and a printer and/or digital projector for displaying the image on a screen from your computer.

PowerPoint includes the ability to print out Notes, pages that feature the slide image with spaces for teacher notes and instructions or left blank for the student to take notes. These can be printed in black and white or color as hand-outs.

In addition to Microsoft’s PowerPoint, you can use the following presentation and slide programs:

Links for more tips and information on using Presentation software in the classroom such as PowerPoint here:

My PowerPoint Lesson is available for download: Synonyms and Antonyms with Electricity 4 PPT (1.27 MB)

Authored by Damien Riley. Hosted by Edublogs.

Paper Does Not Control Me

Damien Riley — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:08:38 +0000

Teaching requires all your wit and candor to reach the kids. When the copy machine takes more than you have, it kind of wrecks your day, doesn’t it? I want to give you an example of how blogs can be therapeutic as well as educational, as I take you through a day when I was truly at the end of my rope!

Since I started teaching in 1997, I have had a love/hate relationship with copiers and printers. It can be so cool when you have a crisp, stapled presentation ready for 30 kids stacked flush on your desk ready to deliver. It’s even better when the print actually enhances the learning transaction and the standard is internalized as a result.

More often than that paper sucks.

Eight times out of 10 when I get my stuff to the copy room, there is a “jammed” sign on it. Other times it is out of paper in which case I have to use my valuable prep time getting cut on the box and opening reams to load in the machine. Even more frustrating are the times when there is a line of 3 or more of my colleagues all holding their “holy grails” of lessons in their arms waiting impatiently for the one in front to gather her/his business out of the way. Let me assure you, you’ll wish you were in hell if YOU are the one who jams the machine with those lines watching over your shoulder.

I’ve often avoided the copier issues by printing the stuff at my computer. We have Brother laser printers and they often work well. It’s never mattered how many trees I massacred as long as the ink was dark and flowed freely, which up to now it always has.

Alas, printers like people, get old I’m afraid. They need routine operations and recently, two in needed to be taken to a nearby cliff (if we had one in the desert) and put out of their misery. I’m speaking of one-half printing. Sound familiar? Lines streaking? Drum light flashing Morse code?

Today, I had all these wonderful road-blocks to getting my lessons taught. You know what I decided? I decided instead of cursing the printing darkness, I’m going to light a candle. Like an alcoholic in his bliss, I declared power over paper.

It will no longer control me!

I have set down a “what-if” scenario for every paper event I can fathom. I have decided that the wool has been pulled over my eyes long enough . . . paper and teaching . . . I can see so clearly for the first time in 10 years: I JUST DON’T NEED IT!

Van Gogh said art is done within limitation, not without. I will indeed have to get creative at times in order to keep my one-day-at-a-time commitment. My students already have a mother lode of printed material in their texts and their consumable books. I see no reason why I can’t pull this off! Stay with me as I try this path less trodden.

Once again for the blogosphere to archive: “I CONTROL PAPER, IT DOES NOT CONTROL ME!”

Authored by Damien Riley. Hosted by Edublogs.

Taking blogs to the Campus

James — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:47:55 +0000

Probably one of the things we get asked most often about Edublogs Campus goes along the lines of ‘why on earth would I bother, you’ve got free blogs right here on Edublogs!’ and to be honest, it’s a pretty good question.

Well, besides the fact that you get to manage, control, create and generally be the boss of all the blogs on a Campus site (not to mention hosting them all on your own domain!) there are actually a few other pretty cool ways in which you can put your Campus account into operation.

So for your delectation, and because everyone loves a list… here are 10 ways you can use Edublogs Campus to make serious change in teaching and learning online at your school, college, uni or educational institution of choice!

1. Provide simple to use but powerful webpages for every class

Ever wanted to have a webpage for every year, class, teacher and student… well, the blogs that you get with Edublogs Campus do exactly that. They can have static front pages, look just like a regular website and be customized to whatever look and feel you fancy. It’s never been easier to get your whole school online.

2. Give every student their own eportfolio, publishing and reflective learning tool

As well as being great website tools, the blogs can equally effectively be used as eportfolios where students can simply upload, post or embed their work. But they don’t have to stop there! As a simple publishing tool for photos and stories or as a private or shared reflective learning log, Edublogs Campus blogs are hard to beat!

3. Surpass the paper newsletter with something far more interactive

Not only is it simple for students, parents and other staff to subscribe toany blog but it’s equally easy for them to leave comments, and for you to manage entirely which comments are displayed and which are not. Now, your regular class newsletter can spare the dead trees and allow parents and students to comment freely.

4. Showcase your brilliant teachers, students and school on the web

Parents, and especially parents or prospective students, are increasingly using the web to scout out good schools and this is one way you can make a definite impression. Edublogs Campus is highly Search Engine Optimized (SEO) so, if you choose, you’ll be able to create a significant place on the web that is easily found and shows your quality.

5. Get your materials, resources, plans, minutes and more online, easily

It used to be the case that getting anything up online was a daunting prospect involving FTP, third party services and worse. Not any more! With Edublogs Campus your teachers and students can simply upload documents, images, videos, audio and more and share it in seconds… and we provide you with unlimited space and bandwidth!

6. Provide private, public and semi-public blogs with a couple of clicks

Your privacy and security is really important to us and that’s why we’ve configured Edublogs Campus to allow you to set three levels of access. Your entire site can be completely private to only registered users, some blogs can be public and others private or your whole site can be open. And you can always password protect individual posts too.

7. Get your teachers talking, with each other and the world

Blogging is a great way to reflectively communicate your ideas, aspirations, thoughts and reactions and the edublogosphere is a vibrant example of how much that can help teachers (check out the edublog awards for example). Give your staff the chance to join in, and while they’re at it raise the profile of your organization.

8. Embrace the social web and kickstart your school into the future

There’s no stopping it, the web is becoming increasingly a place of comments, feeds, blogs, widgets and ‘web 2.0′ or ’social’ applications. Getting an Edublogs Campus account is a great way to start building up your staff’s literacy in these technologies and empowering them to take their first steps into the interactive web.

9. Let each teacher use it each and every way they want

We’re quite serious here… if you look through all the tens of thousands of edublogs created at our free site you can see teachers using blogs in a myriad of different ways, from homework reminders to discussion forums and more. Sometimes the most exciting and worthwhile thing you can do is let your teachers (and students) experiment.

10. Replace your entire school website!

We’re quite serious here… you can easily use Edublogs Campus to replace almost any website. It’s got contact forms, subscription built in, is highly customizable, editable by any staff member (or student!) and is supported, regularly updated and fully hosted by us at no extra charge. You could even save a lot of money!

Authored by James. Hosted by Edublogs.

Who Are the Top Edubloggers?

Lorelle VanFossen — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:34:26 +0000

Aseem Badshah has created a listing of the Top Education Bloggers or edubloggers based upon Technorati’s rankings.

The list is formidable and includes some of the top bloggers dealing with educational issues around the world, covering social media, online education, wireless technologies, Internet safety, copyright, challenging technophobia in education, and more.

Weblogg-ed (feed) by Will Richardson is the blog of the “Learner in Chief” at Connective Learning and the author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (Corwin Press). His site is hosted by edublogs and is considered one of the hottest blogs on education and online technology on the web. His specialty is K-12 and bringing online technologies to the classroom internationally. Recent articles include:

Stephen’s Web (feed) by Stephen Downes who works for the National Research Council, Institute for Information Technology, in Canada. He says he specializes in “online learning, content syndication, and new media.” While his site is more static website than blog, it does feature comments and from his list of most popular articles are:

2 Cents Worth (feed) by David Warlick is an eclectic set of posts on education and other subjects by a “non-traditional educator” who describes his blog as:

Many of the barriers that prevent us from modernizing our education systems come from the baggage of outdated notions about teaching, learning, curriculum, our children, and their future. Asking questions seems to be one way of probing for new perceptions about what we do, why we do it, and how we might adapt within an almost constantly changing environment.

Edublog’s Top Bloggers

Members of the Edublogs Network are also included in the list of top edubloggers from around the world. They include:

Authored by Lorelle VanFossen. Hosted by Edublogs.