Adela

I knew this class would be beneficial for me.  As I said before, my background is accounting so the computer skills that I have beyond the basics is what was self taught.  I have had classes in Word and Excel, but PowerPoint and Access I learned on my own.  I never thought of steps involved in creating a PowerPoint.  I have always just sat down and created the slides.  Now I can teach my students the correct way of creating a presentation, starting with the outline, concept map, storyboard, and then the screens and presentation.  An assignment that uses presentation software can be based on any topic.  It just involves putting the material into a visual format.  This can include importing graphics, animation, audio, video, cards, or screens.  When you do a paper, you were taught to create an outline first to organize your thoughts.  Think of presentations in the same way, but you are taking it a little bit further.  We have always been told that people learn better from visuals.  An assignment using presentation software is just a visual collection of information that the student has learned from his or her own research.  The student is gathering and organizing the information and working on presenting the information using different formats.  What better way to learn information than to interact with it in different formats.  The outline gave them a chance to write about the subject, the concept map gave them an opportunity to find pictures on it, and the storyboard gives them and opportunity to put a little animation to it.  The final presentation gives them the opportunity to review what they have learned and sum everything up.  In my class we would work on our first project together as beginning learners.  Being a middle school teacher for Richmond Public Schools, majority of my students need to work on creating outlines and most of them have never heard of and idea map.  I would do this assignment with my eighth grade students.  We will also do the storyboards together.  Each section will be a learning objective for my class.  First we will do the process together on learning about computers, the parts and how the computer works.  Then I can give the students a project to complete on their own with my guidance.  They will create a presentation with all the contexts using their birth date and the Internet.  They are to research to find out other people who share their birthday, world events that have taken place on that date, television shows and toys that were popular the year they were born.  They will use the information to create a presentation to include the outline, concept map, and storyboard, using graphics, animation, and videos.