How to Teach with PowerPoint Efficiently

Many teachers seemingly have the false impression that forcing students to use PowerPoint in their own presentations will spawn excellent communication skills. The crucial point is that the skills learned to design a PowerPoint presentation are different from those learned to meet effective communication demands. In his New York Times article, provides a disastrous example that illustrates this common pitfall.
The strength of PowerPoint is its ability to allow an instructor to import graphics, audio, quotes, and music or to link to simulations or Web pages. It is a product that optimizes a student's visual learning experience and allows instructors to incorporate multimedia in a manner that is far less cumbersome than are ways that are available without access to such an application. However, it is the rampant misuse rather than the use of this tool that has sparked debate among educators since the presentation software started to gain popularity in the educational setting in 1998


Students feel ignored in lecture halls when the instructor is focusing on the presentation and not paying attention to the class. Part of the problem is limited technology. If the faculty member does not have a remote mouse, he or she may not be able to leave the podium because of the need to advance to the next slide. This inability to move inhibits the teacher from being able to walk freely across the room and see when the students have questions. However, part of the problem is also the fact that faculty tends to focus on the technology and ignore the audience.

The students produce an electronic portfolio at the completion of their projects, which includes the PowerPoint presentations. The presentations aid in faculty assessment of the student projects and give the students a useful vehicle for reporting on their graduate work in conference presentations or providing feedback to their employers.



Designing the practical presentation and application in actual teaching are the basic skill that every teacher should possess. But in fact, most of college teachers are unable to make an attractive presentation, so aimed to those who are not able to create a good presentation; PowerPoint to video converter will absolutely a best option, it can design and convert PPT to video, and it makes this easy for every teacher. Educators don’t need to do any complex designing or programming in order to produce the attractive results he desires; instead, the software can automatically transform simple text into appealing diagrams. Also PowerPoint to DVD converter would also be your assistant that can convert and burn your presentation to DVD disc.



Tips: with this tool, you can also convert PPT to flash so that you can upload your teaching PowerPoint onto YouTube. Or email to your friends.

Students are expected to work in small group projects and to develop a PowerPoint presentation on their project for presentation to the class. The PowerPoint presentations used by the instructors serve as models for student projects in terms of providing guides on how to organize material. Observing how the professor makes use of the material conveys an understanding of how to connect the student project to the wealth of relevant information available on the Internet. The instructional model is an example of situated learning, a modern master-apprentice technique where the instructor models the behaviors expected of the student.

Just like the overhead projector before it, PowerPoint won't turn a bad presentation into a good one, and it won't convert an ineffective presenter into an effective one. Every K-12 teacher who teaches with PowerPoint or lets students use PowerPoint ought to be required to read "Powerpoint Is Evil: Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely" (2003) by Edward Tufte. We've all endured some really bad presentations that "fancy, smancy" PowerPoint didn't save. I love Tufte's point, "If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure." I've seen some presentations in which the PowerPoint overkill detracted from good content instead of supporting and enhancing it.