The Point of Power

PowerPoint. you'd be hard pressed to find someone that doesn't know what you're referring to when you mention it. However add the word 'interactive' in front of it, and people will think you're talking about something entirely different.

PowerPoint in today's age comes with a stigma, and seemingly false representation of it's capabilities. If someone tells you they will be doing a PowerPoint presentation in today's world the image of endless words, charts and a droning speech instantly come to mind.

However PowerPoint is often used in the classroom, quite commonly a uni lecture will be accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation. However because it isn't made a point of, and because it's (normally) used effectively, it can become a tool, not a hindrance.

The concept of making moving images in PowerPoint is not a new one to me, in fact in grade 10 we were given a task to make a powerpoint that incorporated a movie. Most people made a powerpoint about some sort of video, and embedded the video into a slide, however there were a group of us that decided, 'heck.. lets just make a movie ourselves'. so we did.

The concept of making a moving image through PowerPoint however, I did not know about. Knowing that such a basic thing as a moving image can hold such great potential in the world of technology, this is a piece of information I'm glad to now hold.

oint. Is it just me or is "interactivity" all the rage now? Years ago if teachers were told they should make activities to be interactive, a common response could simply have been 'why?'. But then it started to become more and more popular, and now it's becoming harder and harder to find anything that isn't interactive. Which I think is great!

Interactive Powerpoint.

Is it just me or is "interactivity" all the rage now? Years ago if teachers were told they should make activities to be interactive, a common response could simply have been 'why?'. But then it started to become more and more popular, and now it's becoming harder and harder to find anything that isn't interactive.

Which I think is great!

This task in particular is a great help to my own personal teaching experience. It's going to take me a long time to make it to the standard I would like to make it, and will most likely require updates as time goes on, but I'm attempting to create an interactive PowerPoint I can use long into the future. (The topic is biology: adaptation in plants. specifically 'form meets function' the idea will be to design a tree based on function. so the students will go through the PowerPoint, selecting a function, this will choose the form. preferably each option will result in an actual tree example)