Teaching Time: Learning, Design, and Technology: Using PowerPoint Interactive Slide Shows to teach Grammar

For my review and examination of a technology I’ve used in my own classroom, I’ll be examining the use of Microsoft PowerPoint to create interactive slide shows and/or games for English-Language Arts students.

While most educators recognize the benefits of using PowerPoint to present information to students, usually as a visual accompaniment to lectures and note taking, few realize that PowerPoint can also be used to create interactive and dynamic activities for students that provide opportunities to model behavioral and cognitive learning styles. The great thing about converting PowerPoint technology from lecture-specific to interactive is that it uses the same program with which most educators are already familiar. To be far, the bad thing about the process is that it can be extremely time consuming; each individual teacher will have to judge whether or not the time put in is worth the knowledge processed. It was my experience that it was, although creating more than one interactive PowerPoint program a semester would be a lot to ask any educator.

The process to creating an interactive PowerPoint presentation is not difficult to master. After opening the program, a person must first click on “Slide Show” at the top of the page, scroll down to “Set Up Show…,” then select the tab “Browsed at a kiosk.” This mode allows the PowerPoint editor to create slides that can only be accessed through hyperlinks attached to items created on the slides. The overall affect of this option is that it allows the educator to essentially become a game programmer, using “action buttons” or other links to create an interactive activity that provides instant feedback to students.

Click below to see me perform the PowerPoint activity I created (you’ll need to have PowerPoint on your computer to access the file).



As you can see if you clicked on the link and examined the PowerPoint performance, I used this technology to create an interactive lecture on identifying parts of a sentence. My goal was to replace a dry lecture and classroom discussion on grammar with an interactive “game” my students could use to access the same information, while also testing their skills applying the grammar presented in the PowerPoint file. After creating the PowerPoint file, I placed the program on a shared folder on my school’s server, scheduled computer lab time for my class, and had my kids access the file and play with it. All my students enjoyed interacting with the game and none had any trouble navigating the controls. Although I did not measure the success of the game with quantitative data, qualitatively I noticed that students did seem to understand the basics of grammar. Here’s a competing list of strengths and weaknesses of the system, using the following criteria as a guide: student motivation, cognitive growth, the ability to account for individual differences, innovativeness and creativity, and curriculum structures.

Criteria 1: Student Motivation

I found that the PowerPoint activity was great for student motivation. Considering that the interactive lecture was based on grammar, perhaps every English student’s least favorite academic pursuit, the fact that nearly every student in the lab was engaged and paying attention and reading the tutorial was impressive. The student’s were motivated to see each upcoming slide and genuinely paid attention to the directions. They liked the instant feedback and were curious as to what creative item would be incorporated into the feedback for correct answers.

Criteria 2: Cognitive Growth

Judging cognitive growth was a bit more difficult, as I did not use quantitative methods to judge student learning. Qualitatively speaking, it seemed like the students understood the parts of a sentence much more deeply than in previous years, but that could easily be prescribed to my own improvements as an educator over that time. I did incorporate several learning theories (scaffolding, behaviorism, inductive and deductive reasoning, and, to a lesser extend, cognitivism) into the slide show, which could account for increased student learning, although applied learning theory does not guarantee increased student learning.

Criteria 3: The Ability to Account for Different Learning Styles

The technology can be used to accommodate different learning styles, although the more styles the educator tries to incorporate, the more difficult and time consuming the creation of an interactive slide show becomes. It works best with visual learners, as the student who is interacting with the technology can see and read what appears on the screen. Auditory learners can be accommodated through adding audio to the slide show and syncing it with any reading presented. This is a great way to assist struggling readers, but educators might find the creation of audio files to be too daunting when considering the time it takes to create these slide shows. Tactile/kinetic learners are assisted by the use of the keyboard and the interactive nature of the slide show, which is helpful but perhaps not elaborate enough to really activate these types of learners.

Criteria 4: The Ability to Account for Individual Differences

An interactive PowerPoint show is not very good at accounting for recognizing individual differences, as it is at its core a very simple gaming interface that can not easily account for different learners. As a technology, it is really good at presented lecture-type information in a creative way, but the simplicity of the gaming system created (a complex game could be created, but would take literally thousands of hours to construct) doesn’t assist individual differences in the way a professionally produced interactive game might.

Criteria 5: Innovativeness and Creativity

While PowerPoint technology was a huge innovation a decade ago, today it can seem a bit clunky and archaic. The kiosk mode especially feels this way, as it can be a bit counterintuitive and overly time-consuming in how it processes the creation of a game-like activity. This is mostly because it was not designed to create interactive games, so the slide show producer is responsible for their own innovativeness in how they manipulate the technology. It is simply not an easy activity to master, and most first time educators trying to create an interactive slide show are going to run into more difficulties than successes at first. It takes a lot of time to create a good slide, and a lot of creativity. Future versions of PowerPoint might do a better job of accommodating people who wish to use the kiosk option, but right now it is difficult to construct. The creativity is all based on the educator designing the slide show, which can be a nice but daunting reality. The bottom line is that the quality of the product is highly dependent on the creativity of the teacher and the time they wish to put into the file.

Criteria 6: Curriculum Structures

It is under this criteria that the interactive slide shows can really excel. Because the slide show is created entirely by the educator, the possibility of using multiple and dynamic curriculum theories and structures is high. For my own slide show, I applied Tyler’s rationale in the planning of the structure (purposes, educational experiences, organization, and assessment), along with Schwab’s concept of having the structure be based in practicality. The bottom line on the use of PowerPoint interactive technology is that although it can be time consuming and difficult to use (especially at first), experts of the technology can use it to present dry materials in an interactive and interesting way, which is a huge plus for educational practice. My advice for educators would be to create at least one PowerPoint interactive slide show each year, but also continue to look for online games and resources that could access similar information in a more complex manner.

Hope this helps anyone who comes in contact with the blog. I certainly enjoyed creating my presentation.