PowerPoint Presentations

Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation

   I created a PowerPoint presentation for my kindergarten class on inventors.  Students were supposed to know how to describe or characterize an inventor by the end of the presentation. 

     I began the presentation with the objective and then immediately began to introduce students to various inventors.  I introduced Benjamin Franklin as the first inventor.  I had obtained various pictures of Benjamin Franklin using Google images as well as the various inventions he invented.  I moved to Thomas Edison next, and again used Google images to pull pictures of Thomas Edison and the various items he invented.  Alexander Graham Bell was my next inventor.  I again pulled pictures from Google images to put in the presentation.  Henry Ford was the last inventor I introduced to my class before allowing them to invent their own vehicle using Legos.

     This was probably my most favorable presentation.  The images of each inventor and the things they invented were very intriguing to the students.  They asked lots of questions about the images of the inventions.  I was impressed by the quality of the images on Google images….they had a large selection of each inventor as well as the things in which they invented.  I was very impressed. 

     I chose to use the same format for all inventors and the items in which they invented.  After going through it with my class, I felt I could have altered each slide to show a little different layout.  In my mind I was thinking that the common layout would help keep my kindergarten students focused.  I know Microsoft PowerPoint offers a wide variety of layouts and I could have created each presentation page to be very different and unique. 

     I was extremely proud of this presentation.  The images of each inventor and their inventions served to intrigue the children.  They were amazed to see images of things that they were not familiar with and asked lots of questions and wanted lots of explanations as to how each invention was used.  I felt I had truly engaged my students in something that kept them extremely focused and excited.

     I would probably change the layout of the presentation as well as add more information.  I didn’t know how well the students would respond to a PowerPoint presentation and did not add a lot more than images of the inventor, inventions and a bulleted list of the items posted.  I could have added more current inventions and their inventors and compared the two different time frames.

     Overall, it was a wonderful experience for me as a teacher as well as for the students.