Home PublicationsL&LIssuesVolume 26 (1998-1999) December-January (No. 4)

Power Up! Stimulating Your Students with PowerPoint By Andre Harrison

Download the full article (PDF, 645 KB, PDF Instructions)

Getting students interested in academic subjects is sometimes tricky. Math may not seem all that interesting to a fourth grader, for example. In this month’s feature, though, teacher André Harrison describes ways in which he has been able to get his students excited about what they study. And he has done it all with PowerPoint, one of Microsoft Office’s main applications, creating curricular materials to present to his classes.

In my roles as classroom teacher and technology coordinator, I help my colleagues as they integrate technology into their curricula. Because most classrooms have only one computer, many of my colleagues and I simply use ours for data entry. But once I discovered how Microsoft’s PowerPoint could produce amazing class presentations, I began to use the computer every day. Now my students enjoy my presentations because they include color, sound, and animation. Among those I have given to students are “Adverb Jeopardy,” “What Is Poetry?,” “Good Public Speaking,” “Science and Your Body,” and “Put Some Action into Fractions.”

When it came time to demonstrate PowerPoint and persuade colleagues to use it, I had little trouble. Most of them were fascinated with the program’s possible uses and wanted to learn how to use it to produce their own colorful presentations. For this reason, I created an instructional video, slideshow, and handouts that enabled them to work through PowerPoint at their own pace. I suggested also that they purchase television cable converters—what we call “black boxes”—so that they could show their slideshows on their classroom TVs. Now, our one-computer instructors are integrating as much appropriate technology as they possibly can. Technology-presented information has become so intriguing to our students that we decided to eliminate our chalkboards and introduce key points in our lessons using PowerPoint alone.

General PowerPoint Use

PowerPoint can be used across all subject areas and curricula to create and present slideshows, overhead transparencies, instructions for lessons and projects, maps and charts, class notes, and quiz or test reviews and exams. In fact, by presenting them in slideshow format, you can save time and paper. When using such presentations for exams, however, be sure to set the time delay to give students enough time to copy the information or answer the question before the next slide appears.

Students also can use PowerPoint to create presentations on topics they have researched. Using slideshows with oral presentations can help even the most nervous student speak more easily to a classroom. Examples of specific curriculum areas are given in subsequent sections.

PowerPoint and Language Arts

Many middle and junior high school students consider language arts boring or uninteresting. PowerPoint may be able to change this impression. Because of the program’s visual versatility, slides can display information in a way that grabs today’s highly visual learners. Designers can use color, sound, and movement to capture students’ attention—in other words, basic language skills can be taught with a multimedia format. PowerPoint also can help address other learning styles, such as the auditory, visual kinesthetic, and manipulative.

Students also can create and present information with PowerPoint. In doing so, they can refine the skills they learn as they manipulate the program, produce unique presentations, and demonstrate materials, concepts, and what they’ve learned.

In the language arts classroom, PowerPoint can be used to:
	enhance instructional presentations, design grammar games for positive reinforcement, create slideshows to help students with the writing process, produce animated plays, insert images of famous poets and audio samples of their poetry from Microsoft Encarta in a slideshow, generate listening activities, write children’s story books, and add sounds to presentations on figurative language.

PowerPoint and Cooperative-Learning Activities

The following quite successful activity is one of many that my students have designed on their own. Working in groups, they were instructed to produce their own original news show, incorporating as much technology as possible.

PowerPoint in the Math Class

Mathematics is a process, and PowerPoint can help make it more captivating and less time-consuming. Math teachers can use the program to create instructional presentations that show the steps in solving algebraic equations, or identify terms, or introduce shapes. Anything that can appear on a television monitor seems to make concepts more dynamic and learning easier.

Tables, Charts, and Graphs

For graphically displaying material, PowerPoint can be used to: 

• pull in charts and tables from Excel;
• create legends, gridlines, and date labels;
• identify axes (categories and values); and
• create pie charts, bar graphs, and line graphs.

Geometry

To make geometry more dynamic, PowerPoint can: 

• select shapes such as circles and squares with its autoshape feature,
• draw lines for angles and axes,
• select and identify shadow boxes and three-dimensional figures, and
• identify or draw shapes with its drawing feature.

Defining and Testing

PowerPoint can define math terms and test students
on their math abilities by: 

• presenting the steps to solving math problems in slideshow form,
• illustrating story problems through slideshows and clip art, and
• inserting images into the slideshow with the clip art function or with images such as bitmaps from other files or from a scanner.

Teaching Science

PowerPoint can be used in a variety of ways in the science classroom. Teachers can use the program, for example, to provide instructions for dissecting animals. Or when discussing the solar system, they might integrate photos, drawings, animations, or video clips from Encarta or other CD-ROM, video, or Internet sources on the planets or anything else that is relevant to the lesson.

During a study of animals and their classes, genera, and species, information can be classified in chart or graph format. Tables might, for instance, be created in Microsoft Excel and copied into a slide presentation.

Charts on the elements and information about them can be scanned and included in a PowerPoint presentation during lessons on the periodic table. Important facts about specific elements can be copied from programs such as Encarta or from online encyclopedias.

Teaching Social Studies

In social studies, PowerPoint can be used in many ways. For example, it can be used to:  present points of debate; give reports on countries and states (e.g., showing photographs or drawings of the countryside and the national or state flag or playing songs or the sounds of birds); and create make-believe presidential platforms and campaign presentations as the students study the U.S. presidency (telecasts might be run during election week, with the point of each campaign speech outlined and presented in PowerPoint).

Conclusion

I want my own students and those across the country to be exposed to as much technology as possible, so I will continue to use it in each daily lesson and share what I learn with other teachers. In addition, in this day and age, when our students have so many things competing for their attention, we are fortunate to have an instructional aid such as PowerPoint that enhances instruction and motivates students to learn.

Andre Harrison, hopevilleele@zebra.net

Resources

Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook Express, and Internet Explorer: Prices vary depending on version, platform, and upgrade eligibility, so it’s best to go directly to Microsoft’s Web site at www.microsoft.com.

  Read the Online Supplement

Copyright © 1998, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). All rights reserved.