State mandates emphasize assessment of learning material. As districts develop curriculum, they must show how they will assess student learning. Beyond paper and pencil tests lies the world of presentations allowing students to engage in active learning. Presentations assess the ability of a student to take what was learned, examine it, and present it with new ideas. Under Bloom's Taxonomy of cognitive domain, the presentation for assessment requires application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation when students' assess each other's performance. Presentation requires high levels of skill.
Power Point presentations can enhance the cognitive skills because there is so much a student can do
with Power Point. With the computer or laptop, they can research to learn more. They can design slides that demonstrate this knowledge and open a world of creativity. How they present these slides requires decision-making skills and presentation skills.
Laptops need the software for Power Point presentation. Microsoft Word is usually the software used. Before students work with Power Point, you should become familiar with it yourself. It's a pretty simple program similar to designing web pages. You have choices for each slide as to font size, colors, and backgrounds. You can also decide how the material enters the slide. Do you want it to shoot from the left or right or would you prefer that each new slide opens like a window? All of these choices are available.
Once you are familiar with the program, you are able to help the students. If there is a computer technician in the school, have him or her go through the process of using Power Point. Because of many state mandates, most students may already know how to use the program since schools require computer courses. As a precautionary, it's wise to have a review to eliminate possible setbacks.
Give students a guide to how you want the presentation to run. They should know how many slides to present and how long to present. Draft an evaluation form for students to evaluate each presentation. You may consider areas such as content, design, and effectiveness of the presentation. Allow feedback from the students.
On the day of presentation, ask the computer technician to set up the computer to a screen or projector, so the slides
can be viewed easily. Make sure everything is working before class begins. There is nothing worse than spending valuable class time trying to make something work.
Now, sit back and enjoy the slides. Let your students shine as they display what they learned in class and take it to a new level.