Saturday, May 22, 2010

Week 7: Interactive PowerPoints and Teaching Large Classes


Hello everyone,

What a hectic week I had, I thought I wasn't going to be able to finish my assignments for this week.
I have to say the topic "Interactive PowerPoints"this week was the most interesting for me, and I have to admit I'm not that good with creating PowerPoints. I am only familiar with the plain traditional ones. I've learned many great ideas this week from the reading and from colleagues and created a jeopardy game to review vocabulary with my students. I'm not sure of what I've done because I haven't received feedback yet. It's only a sample, I am thinking of ways to change a few things to enhance it and use it in class. I had a hard time creating this game because the tutorial was with Microsoft Office 2003 and I have the 2007 version, and I wanted to use action buttons but I couldn't for the same reason. I also looked at other PowerPoints on our website, they are all interesting with different ideas.
What I came up with this week is that I Definitely need a lot of practice to create a good interactive PPT and I am going to suggest to have training sessions for teachers in my institute as part of our in-house professional development.

Teaching large classes is a real challenge I've never experienced. However, I was a student in a large class during my university study. The teachers back then did not care whether we learned or not, paid attention or not,at the end of the day it was our future, our responsibility and their job was to put what they know in our hands leave us to deal with it.
Those days are behind and things have changed. Students nowadays are much luckier to have all this technology at their disposal to help them learn better and make a future. The ideas in the articles I read about teaching large classes can be applied to small classes as well. What I really think is difficult in teaching a large class is monitoring and observing students, getting to know them individually in order to provide for their needs. I know each student in my class, their likes and dislikes, habits, interests, etc. this is something hard to achieve in a large class.
What do you think out there?

Have a good week everyone

Maha

23 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Dear Maha,

    on Nicenet I explained in detail how to add action buttons in PPT 2007. It's not at all difficult, all you have to do is to play around and nothing bad can happen. Just try! The 2007 version is easier than the 2003, and it offers many possibilities. Indeed, PPT presentations are helpful and resourceful and they offer an alternative, addressing all the learning styles. For visual - we can integrate pictures, for auditory - some music, for kinesthetic - a video and students act out.

    Your presentation was interesting. I am sure students will like it and they will learn many new things from it.

    Good luck,
    Nadina

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  3. Dear Maha.

    Being students we all probably faced the same issues as you did in you student time. Yes, times change but srill we have a plenty teachers who remain the same at these time.

    I think it is our responsibility to change their approach to teaching during our in-service trainings.

    As to Power Point presentation I also rarely use it interactively and frankly say I mostly used it for conference presentations. For my students I just downloaded ready materials and showed them in class. But now I realize that creating PPT according students' needs and fit them into our curriculum is in our hands and we can do it.

    Cheers,

    Nilufar

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Dear Maha,

    It is the third time that I posted it. Sorry but there is something wrong with my Internet and with my fingers maybe!!!

    PowerPoint opens a new world of resources for me and I think for you too. Your picture brings us an idea about how teachers used to present their classes in the classroom. I don't want to say that it is totally wrong but I am trying to explain how teachers need to encourage themselves to learn update ways of teaching this new generation of students.

    See you,


    Zuleika

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  6. Salam Maha,
    Like you, I had learned a lot this week.
    I too was a student once in a large class. What makes a difference between our generation and today's is responsibility. Today's generation, in spite of all the technology at hand and the facilities they receive, they want to be spoon-fed. They want everything ready in all the areas of their lives. We weren't like that. We were provided names of references and notes (copied from the smart students sitting at the front) and that was it! we used to search for extra knowledge, elaborate some points, look for other references, etc. We were responsible to take charge of our own learning.
    Imagine if we had mobiles, FaceBook or Twitter! We could have done magic!!
    See you around,
    Hala

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