PowerPoint

PowerPoints are an ICT that have been around for many years. I used to use them in secondary school for oral presentations to allow the audience to have a visual representation of what I was talking about. It made the presentation more engaging and interactive. The teacher's I had at school also used PowerPoints occassionally, however they used simple tools such as slide transitions and pictures. They did not understand the many other fantastic options PowerPoint gives you.

There is a term called "Death by PowerPoint" or "PowerPoint Paralysis", where teacher's use the tool too often and it becomes something that students dread. As a student now completing Managing E-Learning, I have discovered that the world of PowerPoint was much more than I ever thought it could be.

PowerPoint can display pictures, graphs for statistics, videos, animiations, hyperlinks to more information, text and much much more! The use of creative PowerPoints helps students engage in the content and stay alert.

PowerPoint can be saved and looked at again later. Handouts can be printed out for students so they do not neccessarily have to take notes, and for students who were away in class, they can easily catch up by reading the handout. However, with PowerPoints, there still needs to be interaction with the students, more explaination of the slides, and discussion in the class to create higher order thinking. PowerPoints can be interesting and engaging, but if it looks great but does not require students to think flexibly, than there is little point in creating the slides in the first place.

In summary, PowerPoint can be very useful in the classroom however, it needs to be used wisely and not too often. Sometimes it is a good thing to use technology in the classroom, and then there are times where ICTs should not be used.

References
Teachnology. (2010). Powerpoint in the classroom. Retrieved from URL: http://www.teach-nology..com/tutorials/powerpoint/learn_powerpoint/