How little I REALLY know about Powerpoint

Creating this instructional design project has made it very apparent that I actually know very little about PowerPoint beyond fairly basic functions.  Implementing animations, connecting slides so that you click a button and it transports you to a specific different slide rather than the next slide in the show, and making images appear with a transparent background are all new concepts to me.  I still am unclear as to how Tracy made the background of the characters we are using in or presentation transparent with Adobe Photo-shop.  I find it very frustrating that different versions of Microsoft PowerPoint translate the slides incorrectly.  Our group has resorted to finishing our project on one person's computer so that we do not have to deal with this issue.  I am glad that we were asked to do this project because it has motivated me to build my skills with PowerPoint.  As a teacher, being able to utilize more capabilities of PowerPoint will allow me to create more exciting, engaging presentations for my students in the future.  I look forward to putting my new skills to use someday (hopefully soon) when I have a job!  As for this class, I am very impressed with everything my group has done so far and I cannot wait to see the final product of our project.

Creating Beautiful PowerPoints

One topic that this class has inspired me to think more deeply about is how to create unique, colorful powerpoint presentations.  In searching for a good design template for my group's project in this class, i realized that it takes a great deal of time and effort to find colorful, unique slide designs that fit the content as well as appeal to the eye.  Many templates offered online need to be converted from a zip and somehow implanted into Microsoft PowerPoint.  I have absolutely no idea how to do this, thereby limiting my options for slide designs to what is available by browsing on Microsoft's website via the program itself.  I would like to obtain greater expertise in the use of Microsoft PowerPoint.  I know that my skills will improve over time as I use the program more and more.  However, it would be nice if I could gain the knowledge a little faster.  I tried to search for tutorials online, but could not find one that effectively explained how to compress the design templates offered by sites other than Microsoft from zip files to whatever type of file nesessary to make it usable in Microsoft PowerPoint.  I plan on asking around amongst my peers in the future-maybe one of them will have a greater understanding on how to do this and will be able to show me so that I may do it myself in the future.

teaching by modeling

The Tiger mom article provoked me to think about how much modeling a behavior for a child can help that child adopt the same behavior.  American families often have common values, yet with varying degrees of importance.  Growing up, my family always valued intelligence.  It was very evident growing up that my family valued learning and enjoyed the mental stimulation of challenging academic tasks.  My family did not talk about celebrit gossip at the dinner table, we talked about the latest scientific discoveries or the most intriguing facts we soaked in to our braisn while reading National Geographic.  I love this trait about my family and I am also aware that not every family talks about science at dinner! Other families value being successful in the workplace more so than academic success.  For my family, work was always a means to an end rather than the chief focus of our lives.  My parents worked because he needed to make money to support our family and he NEVER placed work above us.  My parents never gave us over to babysitters-one worked day and one worked nights.  My brothers and i always had a parent around and now, as a young adult, I share those same values.  I value intelligence and family over work.  I will never be a workaholic because no one in my family places work at the top of the latter of values.  I wonder if other people feel the same way? Meaning that I wonder if many others share the values modeled by their parents?

Day 2: Thinking about constructivism

Today in class we discussed constructivism and how it centered around students learning through their experiences in the world rather than focusing on the teacher "giving" them knowledge.  I think that teaching seen in classrooms now is progressing towards constructivism in the new generation of teachers but has not reached a point yet where classrooms are completely centered around utilizing this theory.  I try to relate my lessons to my students' personal life experiences as much as possible in my class.  I wonder how closely discovery learning ties in to constructivist theory.  In discovery learning, students are learning through their experience as they engage in the classroom activity.  Hence, they are learning from their experiences.  Discovery learning is not often implemented by teachers today.. I think that it is a fairly innovative teaching technique that is useful, but takes a lot of creativity to apply in the classroom.  Students discover the answers through following the guidelines of the activity rather than learning the concept first and then practicing it.  I think that students would find discovery learning engaging because it peaks their curiosity.  However, it could become frustrating if there is not enough scaffolding for all students to reach the point where they discover the answer and have their curiosity satisfied.  However, in returning to the topic of constructivism, I believe that it can be very affective in a learning environment because people are always more interested in any topic if they understand how it is relevant and applicable to their real, everyday life or when they can draw from personal experiences to enhance their knowledge of the material.

My experiences with educational technology growing up

When I was a child, we learned how to type and use different programs on the computer.  In elementary school, I remember using this fun program where we created stories.  I really enjoyed that program but I do not remember what it was called.  I also enjoyed playing math games.  I found them very useful in practicing basic concepts as well as entertaining.  In middle and high school we learned how to conduct research on the internet as well as how to use Excel.  Other than that, we did not use technology much in my class.  I remember thinking that technology was very frustrating most of the time.  I disliked using excel tremendously.  I would rather plot the points myself and create a nice graph by hand.  I also found sitting in a computer lab boring and tedious.  Students would often try to go on the internet instead of doing the classwork and if I missed even a single a step of instruction when learning how to use a site or program I would feel completely behind and lost.  However, I did enjoy conducting research on the internet very much.  When internet first developed it was very useful.  Today, it is extremely cluttered and it can be very difficult to find valid, reliable internet sources unless you have access to legitimite online journal environments and search engines.  I think that the new technologies available today are capable of much more in terms of educational use than I experienced growing up.