A reflection on the course

Based off of my own experiences from this course I feel that I finally understand how to use technology in the classroom much better than I did the day that I walked in. However, my only wish is that I had taken a course as informative as this years ago when I first began teaching English overseas and was using technology everyday in the classroom. The sections of class that I feel I benefited the most from were the classes in which we learned how to use Microsoft Excel, WebQuests, SMART Boards, podcasts, Inspiration software, and online software to build a website. Overall, I feel that my experiences using these components and learning from them will benefit me in the future when I teach my own class of English language learners in the country of Turkey.

My first comprehensive non-linear PowerPoint

The ability to use technology to bring life to a classroom lesson so that it can be successful is the aim of teachers all over the world. In a well-run classroom where the teacher uses technology to deliver a lesson to the students, all elements of the technology being used must function well together for student learning to prosper. While many different types of useful technology exist within public school classrooms all across the country, none have gained the recognition and dependability over the last ten years that the Microsoft Office program PowerPoint has. PowerPoint has had a high reputation in recent times as a program that is sophisticated enough to deliver high quality lessons to students that can be either simple or complex, and powerful enough to support the lesson being taught so that printed books can be set aside in favor of this technology. One kind of PowerPoint that seems to have gained a high reputation among teachers over the last few years is known as non-linear, by this I mean that teachers can jump around from slide to slide using buttons at the bottom of each page rather than progress through each slide, one by one. My own previous personal experience using PowerPoint revolves around using those that have been non-linear in design, to improve and support the learning my English language learners do in the classroom. These PowerPoint slide shows tended to be limited to ten or eleven slides and filled with basic information about nouns, verbs, word formation, placement of articles, description of prepositions, and other information about the Englsh language. Unlike in the past, however, the non-linear PowerPoint that I have created for my technology class consists of fifty-two slides and is covers the topic of the Tudor Dynasty of England, starting with King Henry VII and ending with Queen Elizabeth I (excluding the nine days queen, Lady Jane Grey). Never before have I created such a comprehensive non-linear PowerPoint, but because of my experience working on it I was able to generate a useful understanding of how information for a large non-linear PowerPoint can be compiled into one slideshow. I feel as a result of my work I have completely familiarized myself with how effectively construct a non-linear PowerPoint slideshow.