Friday, September 22, 2017

Blog 11-Presentation Tools

Presenting information in a variety of ways is an effective approach to keeping students engaged in the learning process.  PowerPoint is an easily accessible tool in my district and most teachers are comfortable with this particular program.  It is also the most used presentation program around my school, and therefore, not terribly engaging for students by the time they reach the older grades.

The more years I've taught, the more I've learned that presenting information in new and unique ways will create curiosity in my students.  By offering them choices in how they present their information, they are even more engaged.  Students are often asking to come into my room during their lunch time or before school so that they can invest time in using new technology.  Animoto has been a favorite tool of mine and my students for several years.  I have used it to present information to students, display student products (teacher created with student photos), student created book trailers, and presentation of research.  Animoto offers free educator accounts and is easy to teach to students for quick classroom implementation.  Below are a few examples of products I've used through the years and student presentations.





For this particular project, I chose to investigate Kizoa as a presentation tool.  I played with movie maker and collage maker.  The movie maker offered a templates or creation from scratch.  Importing pictures, transitions, and editing were easy to do.  For my final product, I created a collage to kickoff a research unit I will be doing with one of the GT classes on my campus.  This program is a great way to introduce students to movie making.  It works a lot like Animoto in that students would be able to simply download pictures from the web (or maybe Flickr) and assemble them easily into a collage or movie. Whether a technology guru, or the campus novice, everyone could find success using this program, and the best part of all, it's free!



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