Using Powerpoint presentations

Making Powerful Points
This article is available as a presentation, or as a text article -(read below the presentation). You can also download the presentation from the link at the end of this page.

The best way to learn is to teach!
And children love to share, to show, to explain and to exhibit - to peers.
This is what PowerPoint (Microsoft) or Impress (open office) is all about. With pictures, diagrams, animations, funky text et al - slide shows are an educator's dream come true and a child's delight.

When technology entered the classroom, many teachers got excited with its presentation powers and took to making their own (subject) presentations. While this is excellent - slowly teachers have realised that presentation tool is actually more potent in the hands of children. So all the teacher needs to do is sit back and enjoy - while children sweat it out and in the process learned in dollops.

Some notes from our experience:

• Preferably make small working teams of (2-3) children).
• Do not "teach" children PowerPoint or help them out with "hows". Only inform them what all is possible in PowerPoint - if required show one of your slide shows as reference. But let them figure out - how to do it - themselves. Let them explore the menus, buttons, and even use help menu. The task of learning computer application on one' own is not only fun but works on a complex set of critical and logical thinking skills, reading and comprehension skills, social and self skills.
• If browsing is not possible, (or time a constrain) you can collect pictures, music and audio files from net in advance. Child can also use digital camera and mic recording with great effect.
• One of the best ways to make interesting presentation is to put constrains on the slide shows - like - each slide can have only four words max, or min two visuals, or text left and visual on right, each  etc. Or a maximum of 5 slides, or alternate slide is animated, etc.

Presentations in Assembly
If the school has a projector in the assembly area - that this can work wonders. Otherwise a pre-recorded presentation can be put on a computer in a common area of the school. The idea is that children take up any "issue" and make a presentation of exactly 12 slides and of duration exactly 120 seconds (2min). Obviously with this short a duration, it can only be dominantly a visual presentation and what children speak is crisp and succinct. Interesting topics can be chosen like 12 wonders of our body, 12 things our city is famous for, 12 things I learned from xyz movie, 12 ways to save water, 12 things children are afraid of and so on. The sheer focus of these presentation make them a awesome learning experience!

Presentations in Maths

• Since maths can be understood better by visuals, making graphical models of mathematical concepts is the most important contribution of presentations. For example show fractions, addition of fractions, decimals, area of a figure, show factors, or concept of HCF or algebraic equations visually: show what does 3a+4=24 means.
  
• Make slides in the form of Jeopardy game - where answers are given and the respondent has to make question. (Eg: Give a situation where the answer would be the mixed fraction 5^3/4 ) - this kind of reverse thinking is great fun and works on conceptual understanding. So each slide has the answer and each child writes his question for that answer.
• Children like throwing puzzles at each other and using animation to make math puzzles is even more fun. then they give the puzzle slides to each other to solve. Simple eg: which prime numbers add up to 75? or which of the rotated shapes is odd one out or how many ways 

Presentations in Language learning

• Make Story Maps, Make character maps. 
• Convert story's sequence of events - an interesting way to do this is use the animation - when you click on event A - it vanishes and event B appears and so on.
• Draw visuals, click them with a digital camera, add these visuals to each slide, type text on each page and then record the story in own voice and animate the voice and visuals to make your own animated story.
• Type a story - few lines in each slide. Now animate to change some of the words (say using opposites).  (teacher can focus on changing nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions) and make a real crazy funny story.
• Choose adjectives from the story - one on each slide and search the net and put pictures in each slide that are related to that adjective.
• Write a review of a story or book in just three slides – the beginning, the middle and the end – each slide could have graphics and varying fonts and colors.
• Make an ongoing common "Books this class has read" presentation - Make only one slide for each book that you have read.  Put the title and author of the book at the top and then summarise the book into four key points (not more, not less). As you read more books keep adding more slides.
• Create a story of choices - Story starts with scene 1 which ends with choice A and B. Depending on which choice one clicks the person is taken to the relevant slide. So the story flows as per the choice of the person clicking.
• Children create games / quizzes based on grammar rules - each question has two or more choice and if one clicks the wrong choice - one is taken to a page which explains the correct answer.  

Presentations in Sciences

• The best use of PowerPoint in science is to animate static diagrams, illustrations etc. Not only making animations are fun, they help children understand the basic process of the scientific phenomenon. So children can animate how food goes down, how rain cycle happens, haw pollution happens, how levers help lift a big box and so on. (Tip: use 'custom motion path' in the "animation" menu of PowerPoint to move diagrams of letters along the path that you want). 
• Also the good old "observation presentation" is a favourite way of learning science through observation. Children observe a process (say a piece of bread left in an open box over a period of one week). Every day they click photo of the bread. Write down their observations (how it smelt, how it was to touch and so on) and then photos plus text at the end of the week as a presentation of their observations. Digital camera if a huge boon, but if not available, direct drawing in PowerPoint is also okay.
• Visual Quizzes: In PowerPoint one can hide a part of a visual and then using animation show another part hiding the first. This kind of visual manipulation helps in children creating interesting visual quizzes. Parts of things, Usage of things, application of  concepts.

Presentations in Culture, History, Social Learning

• Comparative Studies - Any History or culture can be understood by comparing it with another "time" or "place" or "culture". Get children to make comparative slides - one for each aspect of comparison. Compare Cities, states, civilizations, eras, wars, kings, religions, personalities, and so on. Most interestingly compare past with present.
• Only two minutes - Children in teams are appointed as marketing people who need to sell - a monument, a king, a city, a festival, a crop, mode of transport - anything that forms part of your curriculum. They are allotted 2 minutes and 10 slides. They make slides, present or pre-record their spiel and sell!
• Whats right, Whats wrong - History and culture tends to be mostly shown in positive image - at least to the children. That is why we almost always talk about good old past. One way to set perspective right is to invite children to show whats wrong and whats right with any culture, personality, era, movement, etc.