PowerPoint

“Death By PowerPoint” was an interesting article. I enjoyed the tips brought up by the author. I especially liked the point he made about the difficulty in annotating slides during class, and how that has been solved by presenting on a whiteboard. I have had teachers do this in the past, and I find it much easier to follow along with. Also, when someone is making notes to the PowerPoint as they go along, it helps the class to focus more. It is similar to getting a paper with the exact notes on it; students stop paying attention because they have everything they need in front of them. I must confess that if I know a teacher posts the PowerPoint slides online after class, that causes me to focus on the class quite a bit less.
The first article we read did not capture my attention nearly as much. It was well written, yes, but I felt that it applied more to elementary and middle school educators. Although it helps to have a broad range of knowledge in teaching of all fields, I felt that this article was not relevant. I was excited when I first started reading, because it sounded as if it was going to offer many new ideas of how PowerPoint could be used. Instead, I found that I already knew about many, if not all of the ideas delivered in the text..