Dynamic PowerPoint: A Visualization Tool for

Engaging LearnersScott A. Sinex

Prince George’s Community College

A workshop for the Building Learning with Technology Summer Design Institute held at the University of Maryland College Park on 8-12 July

2002.

PowerPoint Induced Sleep

• Too much on a slide (overloaded) especially text

• Fact after fact after fact - boring• And then read it to your students and

say goodnight

Can we make it dynamic and enhance the visualization of concepts?

Can we get students engaged in the class?

Do you want your students to participate in class? (less lecture, more discussion)

Do they need to predict what is going to be an outcome?

Do you poll your students on issues or an answer?

Active Learning

How to keep your class engaged

• Pose questions – stimulates discussion

• Use animations and/or movies– PowerPoint XP has considerable

animation capabilities– Animated gif files (PowerPoint 2000 or

XP)– Video clips

• Build complicated concepts in pieces

Three shooters with three arrows each to shoot.

Can you hit the bull's-eye?

Both accurate and precise

Precise but not accurate

Neither accurate nor precise

All done using animation in PowerPoint!

Click on object, then right click and select custom animation.

How do they compare?

Can you define accuracy and precision?

Animated gif files

Go to insert and then select picture from file.

Results that are accurate and precise are the best.

To aid in a summary statement

Always active in slide show!

Are you looking here!

What is the direction of the rotation of Hurricane Floyd?

To pose a question

Hurricanes do not occur in the interior US. WHY?

Higher order thinking

http://eliassen.atmos.colostate.edu/images/movies/floyd/ml-00006.gif

http://geography.uoregon.edu/envchange/clim_animations/index.html

cold hot

How does global temperature vary?

equator

pdf handout

Are we in Kansas anymore?

Tornado film footage with narration

Go to insert and then select movies.

Place cursor on image and click to start.

http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/videos/videos.html

time

heig

ht

What does the time of flight graph for throwing the ball straight up look like?

Is this your prediction?

The ball has a straight line motion path with auto-reverse.

The anatomy of stick man

head

foot

leg

hand – three digits

torsohip

shoulder

Is this too busy?

The anatomy of stick man

head

foot

leg

hand – three digits

torsohip

shoulder

Use of entrance and exit animation.

Using hyperlinks

• A good site for site for technology-based lessons

• The author’s environmental science author’s environmental science webpagewebpage

To place in slide, highlight text, right click while text is highlighted, and select hyperlink. Type in URL or file location on your computer.

and click on link

Slide loop as separate file(11 slides)

Play

(Links to another PowerPoint file that is set up to start loop on opening and close by pressing “Esc” key on your computer, which places you back into the original presentation file.)

What is the shark doing?

The anatomy of stick man

A little cartooning!

A sequence of frames or slides - a flip book

using technology!

Draw, duplicate slide under Insert, and modify!

The anatomy of stick man

The anatomy of stick man

The anatomy of stick man

The anatomy of stick manTHAT’S ALL FOLKS

Thanks for coming!!!!

… and sometimes it’s just to get your attention!

For more animated PowerPoint stuff in chemistry and environmental science:

http://academic.pg.cc.md.us/~ssinex/chm103.html

http://academic.pg.cc.md.us/~ssinex/ESI/ESI.htm

Go down page to PowerPoint topics

For a guide to using PowerPoint 2002:

http://academic.pg.cc.md.us/psc/DPP_guide.pdf

This presentation is available http://academic.pg.cc.md.us/~ssinex

Click on presentations

More Internet Resources• Good source of PowerPoint use in instruction at all levels-

http://www.west.asu.edu/achristie/powerpoint

• Free PowerPoint XP viewer from Microsoft- http://www.microsoft.com/office/000/viewers.asp

• Quick tour by Microsoft- http://www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/evaluation/tour/ default.asp

• Two detailed handouts-http://www.eiu.edu/~booth/pub/IntroPPointXP.pdf (introduction)http://www.eiu.edu/~booth/pub/InterPrpointxp.pdf (intermediate)

• A collection of K-12 examples by teachers- http://www.nebo.edu/nebo/ppt (A great sound clip library)