Saturday, March 5, 2011

Week 7 Blog

     There are two types of writing activities I think would work well in my Special Education classroom and those are concept maps and presentation writing. The concept maps would help the students organize their thoughts and keep them on track with their ideas and also help them organize where their ideas fit in. Presentation writing would help my students have a clear outline to give them after the presentation to refer back to the material. Also when using presentation writing it not only gives them a chance to make a presentation of what they know but they also get to be creative and use technology all at the same time.

     PowerPoint presentation can easily distract an audience if there is too many pictures, animations or videos. Another way that it could be distracting is if the power point is too long and not interesting. You have to find a happy medium to accomplish your goal but also keep you audience's attention long enough to make sure you get your points across to them and that they learn the material. I think the potential pitfalls from the book are a great guide in helping you make a successful power point that will not only help you teach but also keep your audiences attention during the presentation, so yes I think I can follow them.
    
     These two writing activities are great ways to keep your students involved and also give them new ways of organizing information that they can not only use in the classroom but also in life. PowerPoint is a great way to effectively present information it gives the audience the information and some pictures and color to keep their interest. Whats so great about these activities is that they help the teacher connect with the student through technology since most of their out of school activities revolve around technology. 

     Jonassen, David H., and David H. Jonassen. Meaningful Learning with Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.