Powerpoints

Up until yesterday afternoon, I have always used home made PowerPoint's as a useful  introduction tool to my lessons.  I teach 3 to 4 year old children and find that a visual inspiration or trigger very helpful ,when introducing a new topic. 

Today in University the lecturer demonstrated some extremely clever interactive PowerPoint's.  The lecturer made the point that PowerPoint's are all well and good and can be a useful introduction tool, however they need to be relevant to the ,learner, interesting and are much more fun and proactive when interactive and if you are super clever you could add hyperlinks.

I have used interactive PowerPoint's with the children and it does make the PowerPoint's more interesting for the learners.  I have found that they gain a deeper understanding of subjects when they can get up and engage with the subject on the whiteboard.  However I have always used other peoples pp's not my own, and probably until yesterday wouldn't of had the confidence to attempt an all singing and dancing pp.  But the lecturer introduced Microsoft PowerPoint 2007  and I had an epiphany, we made a basic pp with some added animation and a little multimedia.  It was amazing and I will attempt to have a go for my next math lesson which is about the 3 little pigs and mathematical positioning.  I am going to make a pp for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place and pigs running races.  Please watch this space!