Group 3 Technologies

This week, we examined tools that can be used to present learning and information. They're all capable of interactivity and are multimodal sources. In today’s online world there are numerous tools, technologies and software packages available to present information. The three resources we will examine today are PowerPoint, Prezi, and Glogster.

PowerPoint

I remember when I first used PowerPoint in primary school, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I loved playing with all the slide transitions and sound affects. Today, I believe PowerPoint is still regarded as the most user friendly presentation tool available to support oral presentations. The reason being that it is a platform that supports the embedding of text, linking and interactivity, audio, video and images.

In my teaching practice, PowerPoint can be used to create a narrated stand alone presentation. Allowing my students to easily record and listen to the information being conveyed. The recording of information by student would be much harder if it were just an oral presentation. Other uses of PowerPoint as a teacher include creating drag and drop activities, concept maps and brainstorming for students.

The activities this week were fairly simple and gave me some good ideas about how I could integrate PowerPoint into my assessment pieces and lessons. In conclusion, there are many multimedia authoring tools available that are complex and require significant learning to use. PowerPoint has a very short learning curve and if used effectively can create engaging and informative lessons for students.


Prezi

Unlike PowerPoint which mainly engages sequential learners through its linear presentation. Prezi also engages global learners by giving a global perspective on the materials as well as having the ability to add minute detail. Today’s generation of learners have proven that multimedia is important to learning outcomes. Prezi supports this by having the ability to embed audio, images and video. Through the use of previous activities like Picnik, I could create very engaging prezi's on the subject material for my learners.

Here is a Prezi I created on Aspects of Fitness, which could be used for a Grade 9 or 10 HPE class

Fitness on Prezi

Create an interactive online scrapbook - Glogster

Glogster was an interesting tool I never knew existed until undertaking this weeks activities. It’s a program that allows you to build an interactive poster using text, images and video. I can definitely see the benefits in using glogster to develop students visual literacy skills as it encompasses all the aspects needed to do so. Here's what I ended up with after playing with it for about 5 minutes, it doesn't really give any information but it allowed me to see how and what I can use it for.