Tuesday 3 December 2013

Presentation Software - Benefits and Pitfalls

There are many benefits to using presentation software in the classroom.  Teachers can use presentations to teach creative lessons that include audio, videos, images, and text, thus reaching the multiple intelligences of the students in the classroom.  Also, these features are often appealing to students, therefore, keeping them engaged.  There are many presentation software programs that have fun and creative layouts, where teachers can present information to their students.
The benefits of students using presentation software in the classroom, is that they can organize topics that they have learned in a way that makes sense to them. I think that Prezi is a great choice for students as there are many different layouts to choose from - and students can pick which layout will best tell their story. 
The collaboration component of some of these presentation software tools like Prezi, and Google Drive Presentation are beneficial to both teachers and students. Teachers can work on presentations together with other colleagues and with students. Students can work on presentations with their peers and can receive guidance and feedback from the teacher throughout. 
The only pitfall I can see to using presentation software in the classroom, is over-reliance on presentations.  I think that presentations are an excellent source, but that it is important that we still keep the ‘human touch’ to teaching.  Learning from teachers and peers in the classroom still has many benefits, including teacher-student relationship building and interactions. We can learn a lot from one another even without saying anything. With that said, presentations are great to use in conjunction with teaching.

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