Interactive presentations can be a highly effective teaching tool. However, the same old boring PowerPoint doesn’t exactly fit the description of interactive. What is an interactive presentation? It’s a presentation that includes interactive elements such as a quiz, poll, video, sound clip or a variety of other options. There are many great resources out there to show you how to add interactivity to your presentations. For example, this YouTube video details the process of making a complex interactive quiz. Another example is this article on how to embed a video or audio clip into your PowerPoint. Lastly, you can use a website like this to create a poll for your presentation in order to receive real-time data! The possibilities are endless.
So, why create an interactive presentation? What are the advantages? According to Schnepf, Lee, Du, Lai, & Kang, “The fusion of audio, video, text, images and animation into multimedia presentations provides an opportunity to create more and efficient communications of ideas” (p. 2). As teachers, “efficient ways to communicate ideas” is not only a necessary part of our jobs as professionals but a highly effective skill for students to grasp as well. Additionally, Teachnology, Inc. states interactive presentations , “can add a new dimension to learning allowing teachers to explain abstract concepts, while accommodating all learning styles” (2011, para. 2). With the diversity in public education classrooms, the ability to adapt to a variety of learning styles is crucial.
From this research and additional research about the best way to create a PowerPoint presentation, I created a presentation to use with my second grade students. I focused on the content area of social studies. Below is the link to this presentation, enjoy.
If you have MS Office PowerPoint, on my website, there is a link to the presentation (some of the features were lost in the embedding process).
Resources:
Integrating Technology into the Classroom
Hey, Ashley! I liked the conciseness of the presentation, and a “mid-way” recap of what was learned. I also had trouble getting my video to work-I finally loaded it via Vimeo, then inserted the link from Vimeo to the Powerpoint presentation before uploading the presentation-that finally worked for me. Good luck!
Ashley-
Nice work on both the blog post and the great example of solid presentation design. I was appreciative of your inclusion of links to resources for improving presentation software techniques and the resources to add interactive elements to presentations as well.
Your presentation has wonderful design- a simple and easy to follow rhythm and pattern (I found myself “hearing” your text as I advanced each slide! Powerful stuff…).
Well done,
Kevin McManamon
Hi Ashley. I liked how you had the links to the webpages in your blog. I always debate doing that. Now that you have done it I see that it actually looks very nice. I totally agree that PowerPoint Presentation does not mean interactive or exciting. It means PowerPoint. The creator must make the PowerPoint interactive and engaging for the students. There are so many ways to do this as you said in your Blog. You PowerPoint is very nice as well. Even though there is only a word and a picture I was engaged and it made me think.