How NOT to use Power Point!

                                                

After watching this funny video about "how not to use Power Point" by Don Mc Millan,  my classmates (Antonela and Micaela) and I discuss about it. We agree  that he has some strong points:

1.     The implementation of charts could bring some confusion to the audience if they are not well explained or well-designed and sometimes they do not contribute to the presentation of the topic.

2.   As regards the use of bullet points, we have to be careful not to go to the extremes, since using to many is not a sign that you are presenting relevant information. 

3.     It is attractive to use some effects in a power point presentation but it is not advisable to abuse of them because they can make your slides illegible an as a result,impeding understanding. 

Another important factor that we can add to McMillan presentation,despite the fact that it  may sound a bit silly, is taking into account the colours we use as regards the fonts and the background of each slide since, some of them can make the information difficult to read. 

When discussing about the problems we may encounter by using Power Point, the difficulty of matching  what we are saying with the presentation of the slides is not an easy task,for example, as Marion says, when telling a story  to our students, it can happen to us that there is a mismatching between what we show and what we are saying. Thus, it is not only a question of presenting slides paying attention to the number of effects we use but also a question of practice of how to make this slides appear on time, in order not to loose coherence.

To sum up,we have to bear in mind that it is important to engage our audience but  not to make certain effects the center of attention,having as a result that the people who are listening to you remember more the effects you include that the information you present. Moreover, there are other  factors that are more relevant such as timing our slides in order to make our message more comprehensible.

      

The importance of teaching digital literacies

                                                               

As we have seen in the post "21st Century Students", we, as future teachers, are going to deal with students that are, according to Prensky," Digital Natives". When teachers ask these students to look up for information (to do a practical work, for example) they no longer consult books but (as we all do since the Internet exists) they do websearch. Taking this into account, it is very important to develop "digital literacies" in our students. N.Hockly, talks about digital literacies in the plural because it focus on different aspects: language, connections, information, and (re) design. Information literacy, the the one we analysed in practical work number one in Eco II, is defined by Hockly as not only to the ability to find information from the web but also to evaluate that information before taking it as valid.

In our first practical work my classmates and I chose two websites and analyzed the validity of the information presented by them according to different criteria. The categories we chose to guide our analysis were: Authority, objectivity, Appropriateness and relevance, currency, responsibility, clarity and accessibility.

Doing this practical work makes me realize that I never thought of this before when searching information on the web, and how important it is, as future teachers,to be aware of the relevance of teaching digital literacies to our students. Why? because technology is and will continue to be the new "bibliography" that students use from now onwards. Most of the information they use to solve their school tasks is searched on the web, so it is extremely important that they know how to identify valid information from that which is not, so as to be aware of which information to use and to believe in. This is important to take into account because they can be constructing knowledge on not save ground.

Learning Journals

When we were asked to create the blog the first thing we were explained was that it would serve the purpose of keeping a learning journal. Thus, how can we define this term? Letizia provided us with information about it and after reading it and watching the video posted in Edmodo I can briefly  define a learning journal as being not simply a summary of the course material but also  a record of our reflections and thoughts and of the progress of our learning. One of the quotes that called my attention while reading about this topic was: "you don't know what you know till you've written it down". Sometimes we “think” we know something  but  I totally agree with the fact that we realize what we know and what we don't when we have to write or talk about it, when we have to connect ideas. By having this blog as a learning journal, we  have to read, connect ideas, give our opinions and most important exchange opinions with our classmates who give us their own point of view or knowledge about the topic or information we post. Apart from learning  and reflecting about the topics dealt in this subject, we also put into practice strategies and skills , such as selecting  relevant information to  include in our posts, presenting a coherent and cohesive piece of writing, among others. Consequently,we continue developing our critical thinking.