Using PowerPoint in Education

I made a PowerPoint for a Special School class for going to the post office.

These learners are in middle school, and are aged about 12. Going to the post office is a routine, 1 day a week activity. This activity reinforces road safety, also, as they walk a couple of blocks from the school to the post office and back to deliver and collect the school's mail.

These learners, although they are special needs learners with intellectual disabilities, are Digital Natives. They love the computer and so need to be 'engaged' with their learning through this ICT, or it is likely they will be 'enraged'. In this case, I use the PowerPoint to 'engage' them.

Before leaving the school, the class Learning Manager explains to his learners what they will be doing and how to act appropriately. As part of their visual literacy learning, learners are shown Widget pictures to reinforce the oral communication. These are, for example, a picture of a letter, and traffic light pictures for when the class crosses a road. My PowerPoint takes the Widget visuals a step further. My plan is for the PowerPoint to be used in conjunction with Widget.

Whereas the Widget pictures are drawn, I have used photographs of the real images the learners encounter. These are, for example, a busy road, the post office where the learners walk to, a stamp, yellow and red letter boxes, and black private letter boxes. In the instance where I could not find the best photograph on the net, I photographed the actual element myself - in this case, the post office - and added it to the PowerPoint. Slides are in the same order in which the learners move through each stage of the entire activity. Here, I am aiming at realism and accuracy because it is realism and accuracy these particular learners need to see to become more visually literate. For those who are more auditory learners, and to augment the realism, I would have sounds attached to the photographs, such as, car sounds for the traffic photograph, and the characteristic 'beep' for the green traphic light.

As well as learning to walk to and from and use the post office, the learners could use the PowerPoint for recount learning. They could use mine as a model, or not. I could make another in which the stages of the activity is out of order and the learners need to rearrange the order to the correct one.



Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants [Electronic Version]. In Prensky, M. (2001). On the horizon. (Vol. 9, No. 5). MCB University Press. Retrieved July, 2009, from Central Queensland University, FAHE11001-Managing E-Learning moodle website
http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/

Prensky, M. (2005). Engage me or enrage me. What today's learners demand [Electronic Version]. In Educause review. September/October, 2005. Retrieved July, 2009, from Central Queensland University, FAHE11001-Managing E-Learning moodle website
http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/

Wing Jan, L. (2009). Write ways: Modelling writing forms (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Oxford University Press.