Reflection on Powerpoint

Brief description of the lesson/topic presented on the PowerPoint
Brief description of the features used in your PowerPoint. Did you use any "challenge" features? Why/Why not.
Did you learn anything new in the process?
How can a lesson be enhanced with Presentation Software (e.g. PowerPoint, Google Docs Presentation software, etc.)

I did my powerpoint presentation on the beginning portion of a unit on motion in physics. The powerpoint gives students an overview on what students should expect in the next few weeks on their unit on motion, and starts to try to get students to think critically about motion. The powerpoint also introduces the basic terms used to describe motion: distance/displacement, speed/velocity (described every day as "slow" or "fast"), and acceleration (described in every day vocabulary as "speeding up" or "slowing down"). The third 3rd and 4th slides will be class discussion, and students will describe the motion of the person running across the powerpoint speed (one animation is going fast, the other is going slow). The powerpoint also gives students the equations used for each of these terms, their definitions, and the units we use when computing the values of these terms. There is also a slide that introduces students to some useful powerpoint websites that will be great resources throughout the year to them.

I used the animation features to demonstrate a man running fast, and then running slow across the screen. I also used word art on some of my titles. I included a number of the clip art items as well. I also included animations for words to come on the screen ("speed" and "speed up" come in fast, "slow" and "slow down" come in slow), and I did this on another slide just because I thought it would look cool. I included transitions between the last two slides, and a sound effect on one slide where I have clip art of a police officer directing traffic. The sound effect is a car horn. I also included a challenge, which was a table. The table is used to show the units commonly used for distance, speed, and acceleration. I've used this feature before on the old powerpoint, but I love the new color-coded tables. And they're so user-friendly, and fit in perfectly with my slideshow, which is why I used it.

I did learn a lot in the process - I had no idea how easy all of the special features were to use! I always thought that the animations were much more complex, but they are not at all. And smooth transitions between slides are so easy to insert as well. I did notice, though, that some of the animations are quite time-consuming (like in my last slide, the words come in at different animations, and it takes a little while for them to come in, but it looks cool!). So if you're looking to make a shorter presentation, it's always best to test the animations beforehand to make sure they are not time-consuming (especially when using animations for words!).

Powerpoint and other presentation softwares are great tools to use to organize your lessons and keep you on-task. It's also useful if you have everything you want said in the slideshow, so that you're sure to include every point you want to make. It also makes for a smooth lesson. For instance, if you want to show a video at a certain point during the lesson, you can always insert the video into your slideshow presentation, or include the hyperlink to the video on one of your slides at the appropriate location. It also allows teachers to have class discussions more, and ask students questions, since the teacher does not have to write everything on the white board, which can take a lot of time. It can also be humorous and fun to liven up the lesson a bit, which is sometimes necessary when there's a lot of material to cover.