Toby's blog

Can you relate to the PowerPoint examples? Describe some of your experiences. What where they missing?

I can relate to a lot of the PowerPoint experiences from many classes that I’ve taken. The biggest one I relate to is when teachers put many ideas on one slide, which makes it difficult to pay attention and really absorb that information. I think most people don’t like too much blank space on a PowerPoint slide, but in reality, blank space is a great way to help you engage the audience, and also maintain focus on one idea. In some of my lectures, it seemed like the teacher copied and pasted part of the textbook onto the slide, and it was so overloaded I didn’t know what notes to take, or what the main idea of that slide even was. I was so busy writing down the entire slide that I didn’t even listen to the teacher, and just wasted time writing too much information down that I didn’t use in the long run.

I can also relate to reading off of the slides myself, because when you get in front of the class, it’s easy to lose confidence and want to stare at the slide. If we stare at the slide though and don’t make eye contact with the audience, we often lose their attention and engagement. If we keep our slides straight to the point, we can give the audience a better chance to engage with us as the speaker by making eye contact, and also help them really listen to what we’re saying, instead of zoning out while they take a bunch of notes. Overall, I think that the amount of information on a PowerPoint slide is often overlooked, but definitely less is more in order to keep engagement and make it easier for the audience to absorb the information.

Reference:
1) https://slidemodel.com/templates/overwhelmed-business-analogy-slides-for-powerpoint/8332-overwhelmed-analogy-1/

In the future, I want to be a teacher and teach environmental studies. Since the environment is constantly changing, which means data is constantly changing, it’s difficult to keep track of everything on paper. This is why I believe having a strong background in using multimedia is important because it’s the way things are being logged these days. The ability to use multimedia to log data and also do research is very important not only for myself but also for my future students. I hope to learn how to use multimedia and interactive learning better so I can implement it in my future classroom and also be caught up with how things will run (since our society is becoming more and more dependant on technology.)

One thing I’m unsure about is if this class will teach me how to use multimedia in the classroom and use interactive learning, or if this class will just use multimedia and interactive learning for our own learning. I’m also unsure about what interactive learning looks like beyond physical things like field trips. I would like to better know what interactive learning looks like, and though I already know it is beneficial, I’d like to know more specific reasons why it is beneficial for students as well as benefits for teachers. I hope that these things will one day help me to be a better teacher, and also help me to enjoy this class this semester. 

[Image]: https://womenveteransupport.com/a-few-things-to-consider/