What is Power
Point?
Microsoft
PowerPoint is a program that’s part of the Microsoft Office package. It’s built
up as blank “sheets” that you fill with what you need to make your presentation.
When the first sheet is filled with what you want in the form of text, pictures,
audio or video clips, you make another one and so on, until your presentation
is ready. Then you can share your PowerPoint presentation with others as a
slide show.
What do you
need to use Power Point?
You need a
computer and the PowerPoint program. It’s also possible to use PowerPoint in
smartphones, even thou all PowerPoint functions aren’t supported in all of
these items. The program for Iphones costs about 55 SEK at Itune store.
If you want to
share your PowerPoint presentations with others, it may be a good idea to have
a projector or an interactive whiteboard available.
How does
PowerPoint Work?
When you open
up the PowerPoint program, you will see a sheet of “paper” on the screen. On
this sheet, there is a suggestion for a layout, in my program there’s a box for
a header or a text at the top, and a larger box where I can choose to insert
text, pictures, charts and so on at the bottom. This layout is easy to change
to whatever form suits you best, by either clicking the “layout button” or simply moving your things around to different
places after you have inserted them.
When you’re
pleased with your first presentation sheet, you click the “New Slide- button”,
to get your second page.
Under Animations you can decide how you want
your slide show to function and even add i.e. applause or bombs as
complimentary sounds.
If you want to
see the result of your work, you go to “View”, and then “Slide Show”. At the
Slide Show, you can either let the program itself change page after a preset
time, or you can go to the next page by clicking anywhere on the page you’re
on.
The easiest
way to learn about the different functions in PowerPoint, is to simply try them
out in different ways. If you still are interested in more information about
PowerPoint, there are help programs on the web. Just search for PowerPoint, and
there will be lots of different guides to provide help with the program.
How can Power
Point be useful in teaching English?
PowerPoint is
useful when you’ve got material that you want to share with a larger group of
people. It can be used for introducing new words or grammatical features, for
making a story together or for presenting a topic for discussion in class. The
opportunities are basically only limited by the teacher’s fantasy.
The most
common way to use PowerPoint is (as I imagine) to make a slide show of pictures
and text. I would like to point out another way of working with the program,
thou.
PowerPoint can
actually be used for constructing games for the class. As an example, I’ve made
a sort of Jeopardy by using a “Smart Art graphic” under Insert.
Each of the
three shapes, I’ve named to different categories: “Animals”, “Colours” and “Food”.
Then I named the underlying shapes “100”, “200”, “300” and so on. I want to be
able to press the button with “100” and then go to a question decided for that
level, and that’s manageable if I right click the “100” button and then choose hyperlink. In hyperlink I can choose which page in the document I want to access
with clicking the “100” button.
This means
that when I choose Slide show, the
pages doesn’t come in the order they were made, but I can jump between
different pages by clicking the different buttons on the first page. This will
make a fun game for any class since you as a teacher can fully decide which
questions are appropriate for your pupils, and the pupils can decide which
level they dare to try and master.
How can Power
Point be useful for learners?
PowerPoint can
be used by learners to present different kinds of work, both individual and in
groups. It can be used for making stories, presenting things the pupils have
learnt, showing the classmates pictures or video clips etcetera.
When working
with presentations in PowerPoint, pupils practice reading, writing and speaking
while they can rely on pages that are set in a specific order. They communicate
with their classmates in a fun and easier way supported by pictures, text and
audio, I imagine.
Sabina Ahlqvist
Dear Sabina,
ReplyDeleteI would like to comment your plog. I think that you have enough knowledge and experience about Power Point. You clearly talked about and described what is Power Point. You explained in a very attractive and fashion manner particularly the examples you gave.
You also mentioned that we need a computer in order to use a PowerPoint and to share the presentation we also need projector which facilitates us to show our audience on a pig screen which is smarter and clearer than small sized monitor screen.
I know that it is not very simple to use a PowerPoint in a very smart and professional way especially when you need to design your presentations and animations. There are 24 different layouts in PowerPoint slides and each slide gives you different style and meaning. For example there are many different slides such as a blank slide, title slide, and two columns slide, inserting a graphic slide or picture slides and many more styles. I same times find difficult to use the most proper way but the only think I can say is that you have clearly and professionally explained about PowerPoint and how we all use it, be either teachers, students and other users. Well done Sabina and thank you for your plog!
I think that you did not mention that Ms PowerPoint has different colour and background colour which is one of the most important thing especially when large number of people want to see your different slides. If the slide colours is the same then the presentation will not be interesting.
You also did not mention that PowerPoint has rehears and timing which means that you can set a time to your presentation so that each slide appears its own without clicking the other or just moving the mouse and this is one of the most important and richest wealth of PowerPoint.
jihad khalil
Hi
ReplyDeleteYour text about PowerPoint is well written, informative and interesting. The text is inspiring and it makes me want to use PowerPoint.
I think you have a good point about the pupils having fun while they are working with PowerPoint. This will also give them a chance to improve skills like speaking in front of a group with technical aid.
One thing that was interesting was the description about how to make a Jeopardy game. I did not quite understand how you did the programming; maybe you could explain it more in another blog post?
I tried PowerPoint with my pupils and they thought it was much fun. They are twelve years old and quite familiar with computers but they have never tried PowerPoint before. They tried a lot of different functions and they also inspired and learned from each other. Because they found it so interesting their motivation for the subject improved. It was a little bit difficult though, to figure out how long the task was going to take, because they wanted to try so many different functions. So I totally agree with you that learning about PowerPoint is easiest when you try out the functions one by one.
By Carolina Carlsson