PowerPoint

I have used PowerPoint for a number of years for lectures and seminar presentations at university, so most of the stuff in the Atomic Learning tutorial (http://www.atomiclearning.com/)was pretty familiar.

In the past, I have been in the habit of using the custom animation functions, but only as a means of revealing one dot-point at a time as I move through the material contained in a slide. (I find that if the entire content of a slide come up at once, the audience tends to try and read the whole slide before they tune into what the presenter is saying).

I haven’t gotten into anything too fancy with my PP’s, as I’ve seen them more as tool to keep myself and the audience on track and focused when I’m lecturing or presenting, and have viewed the fancier entries and transitions as a bit of a distraction from the content of the actual lecture/presentation.

Of course, Prezi presentations (http://prezi.com/) tend to be even more visually stimulating than the fanciest PowerPoint you're likely to see, and people seem to love those at the moment. Mind you, I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason people love Prezi so much is precisely because it gives them a welcome distraction from uninspiring speakers.

All that aside, I did learn a few things from the Atomic Learning tutorial that I think I will apply in the future; for example the stuff on putting diagrams together (great for catering for the more visually inclined learner), and the stuff on creating custom master slides.

I found in last semester's placement that PP was a great tool in history classes for showing the students primary sources, maps, etc. Some of the presentations I used last semester did not contain any text at all, which was good. (There's no danger you'll just read from the slides if the slides don't contain any text!)

Here's a quick movie to show you a PowerPoint I used in one of my year 8 Medieval European History  lessons last semester. The topic was crime and punishment; specifically, torture devices. I put the pictures of the torture devices up before showing the text, and had the girls talk about how the devices might have been used. They were surprisingly good at working them out!