Powerpoint as an instructional tool

In class this week we have been working on our PowerPoint presentations. I learned a lot about how to get on google docs, edit my presentation live once it is uploaded, publish my presentation, share with other collaborators, and attempt to publish/embed my presentation in my blog. Everything worked like a charm until I got to my blog and pasted the Html into the edit section and returned to the compose section to see the fruits of my labor by watching my presentation. Unfortunately all I saw was a box with the words; Not Found and Error 404. I almost made it to the end of a computer task successfully, but as usual something went wrong. I am not giving up until I find what went wrong. To be continued... I returned to google docs and went through the process of attempting to publish/embed the presentation into my blog again. This time I found success. This task as most computer tasks do took me a long time to accomplish, but it was worth it because I learned many new lessons through the process.

I chose to work with the Corel Painter Tablet as my peripheral. I enjoyed playing around and experimenting with all the different tools and colors. I chose this tool because of my daughter who loves art and creativity. She would love to own the Corel Painter Tablet. In the classroom this would be a great tool to incorporate as a drawing element for writing stories and expressing meaning. It would be so neat to use this on smartboard in the classroom for all the students to see. On the smartboard students could take turns adding something new to create a collage as a class collaborative art piece to incorporate with a book that was read during language arts. This tool could be used by a teacher in an art class as well as for the students to experiment and create projects. In Corel Painter you can choose from a large variety of painting and drawing tools to use with oils, paints, crayons, chalk amongst others. Choices can also be made from a wide variety of colors, textures, shades, and designs. In a classroom of younger students you could teach a lesson on primary colors and what happens when colors are mixed.

I practiced using the Corel Painter Tablet twice in the computer lab. The first time I tried it, I struggled with getting it to work properly like Skip did during the presentation. He always makes things appear to be so easy, and they probably are, but I often struggle. Once Skip offered to help me the tablet worked like a charm. I had fun experimenting with different drawing and painting tools. I of course went through the steps of instruction for my PowerPoint presentation to make sure they worked. The whole time I was experimenting I was thinking how much fun my daughter would have with this tool and how much more creative she would be with it than me. It is a fairly easy peripheral to use and I would recommend it for people who love creativity and it would be fantastic as a tool for a classroom.