PowerPoint and Taxonomy

PowerPoint: Effective Tool or Dull Distraction?
This week we were given an advanced tour through the world of Microsoft Power Point. Now Power Point, for those who don’t know, is a great tool for both teachers and students, due to its ability to facilitate discussion as well as give direction to a class. With that said, not all power points are equally impressive. As a mater of fact it can be very easy to create a power point presentation that is dull, boring, or worst of all distracting.
There are a few simple tips to follow to avoid making a horrible power point... Keep its short and simple. The presenter shouldn’t be reading the power point to the class. Some people have the habit of putting all the information on the power point and then reading it to the class. This is bad for two reasons; one the back of the presenter is to the audience affecting the delivery of the actual presentation. Two, more often than not, students will end up trying to copy every word of the presentation distracting them from your lesson. It is better to think of the PowerPoint as an out line of your lesson. This will keep you the teacher on point and in the right place. Some teachers have the tendency to get of on a tangent. An effective simple PowerPoint can help teachers stay on message and get the desired point across.
Organization is Key! Make sure that the each slide has the same format. It is very fun to add sound effects and or media, however when doing this make sure it has a specific effect. The presenter must make sure that the media supplements relate to the presentation on hand. For example if I am talking about the music theory and I put a picture of a frog, to be creative I need to be able to tie the frog to the music. If I cannot do that it becomes a distraction or confusing to the learner.
Implementing an effective PowerPoint in the classroom can really help facilitate learning especially for more visual learners. Students can take advantage of this technological tool to create slide shows and create games for review among other things that can make the classroom very entertaining. As long as multimedia and PowerPoint are used correctly it becomes a great tool for learning. However is used incorrectly it becomes more of a burden on the class rather than a effective learning tool.

Blooms Taxonomy
Taxonomy is essentially a set of criteria for learning. At first I saw it as a rubric of learning but in reality it describes different standards of learning competence. A lot of times students are only evaluated at one level, which is the knowledge level (the most basic). Bloom argues that there are many different levels of knowledge. Consequently it is essential for the teacher to incorporate more advanced methods of knowledge in order to promote competence.
I found the page on applying taxonomy very helpful, as it will help me as a teacher to challenge students to think deeper than just the facts. The site gives hints on what types of verbs to use in teaching as well as asking questions. Furthermore it suggests possible questions to hit different types of competences in the knowledge of the students. I will definitely use this to further challenge my students to think critically about the given material. I look forward to using this also in assessments to make sure that there a complete knowledge of a particular unit.