Presenting Content

    Presenting Content is the second new media class I attended during the summer semester 2011. In this course, we got to know how presentations can and should be structures, how worksheets can be designed, or what tools are suitable for teaching purposes.In the first class, we looked at old worksheets and later on re-designed them. Thereby, we tried to avoid all mistakes of the old worksheets. The new ones we came up with are clearly structured, evoke interest and do not overwhelm the pupils. The next class was about poster design. Here, we collected some rules for good poster, and at the end of the lesson, we designed our own posters displaying the rules we came up with. In the next class, we worked on PowerPoint rules and visualized them in a short PowerPoint presentation. As homework, we had to work on one of the PowerPoint functions in detail. The function we focused on is called SmartArt and can be used to visualize relationships between items in many different ways. Our homework was to choose three different sentences and then to illustrate them with the help of this function. After working with basic programs like Word or PowerPoint, we turned to some online tools that can be used in school. The first tool we got to know was bitstrips.com. On this page, you can find a comic generator that is easy to work with. With the help of this comic strip creator, we designed a worksheet dealing with one topic mentioned in the Hessian curriculum. At the top of the worksheet, we included a three panel comic strip the pupils should work with. After using a program to create comic strips, we turned to software tools to edit pictures and to create posters online. The tool we worked with is called Glogster. This program offers the possibility to create and store posters online. In order to familiarize ourselves with this tool, we re-designed the posters we created for poster rules online. In the next lessons, we finally worked on podcasts and videocasts. Therefore, my group used a program called Dragontape. This program offers the possibility to cut and edit YouTube film clips and to create a new film out of them. The last two sessions consisted of PechaKucha presentations about our e-portfolios.
    In the drop down menu, you can find all products described above. Alternatively, you can access them by clicking on the links provided in the text. I hope you enjoy looking at my products, and probably you can collect some ideas for your own teaching.