Blog 5: Power point and Taxonomy

In our most recent class of Education 422, Professor McCulloch refreshed our knowledge of power point. I found this to be very helpful because I don't think I ever really had a proper lesson on PowerPoint. I learned how to apply different animations and effects to each slide or all slides. I had know idea that there are online sources where power point templates can be downloaded and applied to my own slides. It was encouraging to learn that PowerPoint is not as basic as I had thought, that there are sources outside of the ones provided on the software. Further into our PowerPoint refresher course, we learned the dos and do nots of PowerPoint. There are many minor factors that go into making a decent power point. For example, by applying various sounds to one or more slide, the viewers will most likely be too distracted to even pay attention to the content of the slide. Some points Professor McCulloch provided us are to avoid abbreviations and acronyms, no more than two graphics per slide, use animation to emphasize points, don't use more than 5 bullets to a slide and 8 words to a bullet and a most important only include what is necessary.
Power point can be a very effective tool in many ways. The teacher can provide the students with the lesson before it is even presented. In this situation, the student can get a head start on the material but also print an outline of the power point and bring it to class to write notes next to each slide. In this example, both the teacher and student are impacted because both student and teacher are more likely to be on the same page therefore the lesson will be more efficient. I plan to use power point within my own classroom. The example above is one way I would include this tool in the class to improve my teaching and my students' learning. Another approach to power point that I would implement in my classroom is using power point in a game format to review for exams or when finalizing a chapter. In this manner my teaching ability would be improved and the students would be able to actively participate in improving their learning.
Bloom's taxonomies addresses levels of abstraction that are commonly seen in the education setting. The different competencies covered are knowledge, comprehension. application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. I think that Bloom's taxonomy is an interesting abstract of preperation for exams. According to my understanding it appears that each competance is thoroughly addressed with each skill that should be demonstrated. I think this is a helpful tool for any student and serves a rubric like purpose to studying successfully.