PowerPoint as a Random Access Device

Here is something completely different. What I love about this idea is that it is really thinking outside the box. I love that it takes something familiar and uses it in a new and creative way. So here is the story.

Mr. Chun was teaching PowerPoint. Specifically he was teaching a feature that lets the user create boxes that are actually links to other slides, not necessarily the next sequential slide. Faced with teaching it as a simple “here’s the menu, there’s the dialog box, let’s all forget about this immediately,” sort of lesson he got creative. And once he got creative his students really took off.

In brief what he assigned was to create a "choose your own adventure" assignment. Kids created all sorts of unexpected things. If I had to guess I would guess that a lot of them went out and learned a lot of extra things just to make their projects better, more interesting and more fun.

Read the whole story here and find out about some of the truly "not your typical PowerPoint presentation" ideas his kids came up with. In my book this is great teaching. Oh sure it is not the sort of "by the book, teach to the test" sort of thing that some people seem to like these days. But these kids are going to remember what they learned on this assignment long after any test. One of the things they are learning is that you don't have to use a tool exactly the same way everyone else does and that is a valuable life lesson all its own.