PowerPoint Presentation

18 July 2007 – First and foremost, we were given a form (questionnaire) to be filled in.

“Oh Gosh! I have very limited skills in ICT. Can I cope with this course?” (completing the questionnaire).

I guessed the questionnaire was aimed to obtain information about our prior knowledge on ICT as well as our ICT skills. In fact, it was good to carry out this questionnaire because the lecturer and the facilitators can gain valuable input which will be useful to conduct the course later on. They will be able to match the intended learning objective with our prior knowledge. This is because, new knowledge are derived from previous knowledge after going through the process of accommodation and assimilation. They need to identify our ability before proceeding with a total new skill. For instance, one of the questions requires the information on whether one has experience in using Microsoft Office PowerPoint. If all the respondents answered a ‘YES’, then there will be no problem. But if some of us answered a ‘NO’, then the facilitators might introduce or guide those who are new to this.

Ooppss….. Why am I straying away from the more significant events of the lesson? This simple questionnaire does matters to me. As future educators, I cannot run away from the fact that we need to know the learners’ previous knowledge before planning a lesson. The same goes here, the questionnaire will provide the lecturer and the facilitator with some valuable input to help them to carry out the course so that it will benefit all (my humble opinion only).

Let us get into the core event of the lesson:

We were required to work in groups to prepare a PowerPoint presentation on a given topic and present it as if we are promoting the product. Before proceeding with the task, we are to get into groups of 5 or 6 and give our group a name. Having formed a group, we brainstormed ideas on possible names for our group and all of us agreed upon my suggestion of TECHNO_THINKERS. My group was unfortunate to get an unfamiliar technological gadget, Digital Camera SLR (Single Lens Reflex) as our topic or should I say we were more fortunate to present on this gadget. We will find out this, at the end of this entry.

Ready….Get Set….Go….Without being a slave of procrastination, we quickly divide the task into 3 minor tasks where; Lali and Nanthini are to prepare the slides in terms of animation and to insert the texts, Maisarah and Tussna are to find suitable pictures and basic input while Loura and I have to search for information on advantages of SLR Digital Camera. We were given around an hour only to complete the task. We managed to prepare a simple yet informative PowerPoint slides. We used only key words and phrases to highlight our message instead of chunking all the information into the slides which might confuse the audience. We were almost done when, Mr. Shahril asked us to transfer our PowerPoint presentation to his computer. Meantime, I was trying very hard to digest the information collected since I will be the presenter for my group. I had a tough time digesting the information since I am not familiar with this technological gadget. Below are sample of slides prepared by my group:

(the watch on my wrist shows 2 p.m)
We were the first group to present in MK1. Following us, was other groups which presented on other topics namely; Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Hotmail etc. After each groups’ presentation, Mr.Shahril gave constructive comments to help us to further improve on the slides.

What have I learnt today?
I gained valuable information on SLR Digital Camera, its’ functions and the advantages of it. I also did learn about the use of Hotmail, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and so on. I also receive some tips to prepare a good slide.

My Question?
The name of this course (Technology in Primary Education), will suggest to us that technology is applied in primary education. Well our presentations on various technological inventions were informative and did provide valuable knowledge but it would not be significant if it is not applied in the context of primary education. Thus, I was just wondering why we were not exposed to the application of these technological inventions in primary education.

My suggestion
Perhaps we can identify and present on ways to use these technological inventions in a classroom.