Bleak November, bright PPTs!

An interesting week. My Webskills study mates have been busy posting notions about teaching large classes and once again they have baffled me by being both clever, hardworking and creative. So many of them have genuine hands-on experience of enormous classes too. The situation in Finland is so different - we have a great number of very small schools and in basic education the class size is being kept in about 20 with the help of extra funding from the Ministry of Education.

As for myself then, I had (you've heard this before sorry) no real time for Webskills exept (in my thoughts and) late Saturday night and tonight, Sunday. A busy work week and then all of my weekend spent in a training about mediation. That is voluntary work to help the legal system in this country through what is called restorative justice.

I was glad our second assignments this week had to do with use of Powerpoint as I thought this is peanuts for me: I am pretty good with PPT in my own little ways: I have been using PPT since, say late 1990s, and little by little I’ve learnt to use a great number of the functionalities PPT has on offer. Also, as a frequent presenter in a variety of settings and a keen critique of my fellow-presenters, I have learnt, early on, not to put too much stuff in one slide (not always so with in my presentations though) and not to use a font that is hard to read; also I use animations a lot and I time my animations quite in an audience-friendly way - I think. I use a lot of pictures, including print screen snapshots and hyperlinks to pages on the internet. However, the animations that were suggested in the article about (3D ppt) were a novelty to me and I did not really get to grips with them, as yet (I will, soon…)

And then, I haven’t used videos or music at all in my presentations - and this is something I MUST DO AFTER WEEK 6 at Webskills! I haven’t shot any videos with my smart phone even if I know I could and that every kid can do that. I will – I’ll have to push myself into doing that before Webskills is over.

Anyways, what I learnt and did in a small way already (you may check my upload in our Wiki) is understand how to add interactivity to PPT presentations.  I will try to work on the presentation still as I will need it in January the latest. Thanks Courtney! The main thing is, you are providing us with great pedagogy again. A substantially new way to consider PPT as a tool to improve teaching learning.

One tiny thing still, Courtney said prezis, which are sort of a fad in presentations, can make people dizzy. Well, I am certainly one of those people and I am glad this was mentioned in our course. The techniques about prezi may be great but they should be audience-friendly too.