Skip to main content

Thing 07: Presentation Tools

This is my first year using GoogleClassroom regularly for my own students. I like the classroom because it aids in communication between teachers and students; however, it has drawbacks, too.  

For example, since I began teaching (12 years ago), I've always used PowerPoint as my tool-of-choice for presenting info, directions, images, etc. to my students. What I started doing this year was posting all of my lesson materials in my U.S. History GoogleClassroom...powerpoints, note sheets, homework, etc. What I've noticed is that the PowerPoint files don't always mesh nicely with GoogleClassroom...sometimes students will open the slideshow and the images will be misplaced or the text might run off of the slide. 

For this assignment, I decided to mess around with GoogleSlides by uploading a PowerPoint that I'll be using after break to the Drive. This way, when I post the slideshow to GoogleClassroom, I'll just post the GoogleSlides presentation rather than the Powerpoint, and hopefully avoid any glitches. 

By messing around with this uploaded Powerpoint, I was able to fix a few things that I noticed were off.  Now that I'm more aware of the differences between Powerpoint and GoogleSlides, I think I might just begin creating future new slideshows in GoogleSlides to prevent any glitches or re-working on my part. 

Here's the link to my GoogleSlides presentation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MblpcMsyAQ-r5FKNZV-V_bLPjhoyaqWccbtqyS2jJCc 

Another tool I looked into was Prezi, and this might be another option. I've never made a prezi, but have always liked the look of it. From what I gather, it looks to be just a link to a website, so this would be easy to link in my GoogleClassroom and would also avoid any glitches between differences in Powerpoint vs. GoogleSlides. Glad I have some more options to consider here. 

Comments

  1. I've gotten to the point where I rarely use PowerPoint any more. Google Slides has all the features I usually need.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thing 4: Twitter, Facebook & PLNs - Lia Williams

I made a Twitter account a while  ago...probably a couple years after it became popular. At the time I did it just to do it, and I followed a few different people/associations that I felt posted things that were relevant or interesting to me. After exploring some of the hashtags that were suggesting, and finding even more that were not mentioned, I realize what a valuable tool Twitter can be in helping me access different resources.  Having taught for 12 years, its easy to fall back on previous lessons using the same old sources, but I actually found (and followed) a few new  people/associations that included links to sources that seem like they could be useful (HistoryPod, achievethecore.org). There is definitely more out there now than there was when I first joined, and I'm excited to spend some more time perusing Twitter to see what else is out there. I'd like to use Twitter to get connected to new and different resources, and I'd also like to get more act...

Thing 31: Final Reflections - Lia Williams

As with Cool Tools Session #1, I learned plenty from this session that I was able to incorporate into my teaching practice (and even one thing that applied for my home-life/own kids!).  For school, I was able to incorporate a few different tools in my practice...from Flubaroo to GoogleSlides, to different ways to assess and provide feedback to students.  Personally, I created a library for my 5-year-old son using Padlet, and it turns out that another PD that I did used Padlet as a response tool as well.  I'm glad I got familiar with it through Cool Tools so that I knew how to use it without any glitches.  A few other people in my building have done at least one Cool Tools session, so I really enjoyed talking with them about what they chose to explore. Some chose different "Things", and some chose the same "Things" that I did. I was able to learn about tools that I didn't explore, and I was also able to see what others did for the tools that I did ...

Thing 05: Audio Tools - Lia Williams

I chose to check out Flipgrid, which I've never heard of before, but will probably try to incorporate into my classroom somehow. Flipgrid has many options, but the one I chose to do a video on was #8: Exit tickets get a makeover.  Post the question “What did you learn today?” or better yet ask your students “What did you create today?” for the students to answer before leaving class. Here's my video, which would be used as the Exit Ticket prompt (you have to click my selfie for the video to play!):  https://admin.flipgrid.com/manage/grids/1013642/topics/3093325  I don't always have to do a video to ask the question, but I like that students have to record an audio or video response. A lot of students are hesitant to write, but a good percentage of my weak writers could talk for hours . One of my theories that my co-teacher and I have been testing out this year has to do with the hypothesis "If you can talk about the topic or teach the topic to someone else flue...