How NOT to use PowerPoint!

After reading the coolcatteacher blog, I had to share this with you. Great post Vicki. I love your blog!

Don McMillan is a comedian, and he has a hilarious video on his myspace page titled Life After Death by PowerPoint. Whenever my students create a PowerPoint presentation they always make the same mistakes (too many words on a slide, too many bullet points, too many animations, and so on). I can't wait to incorporate this video the next time I discuss PowerPoint in my class.

Life After Death by PowerPoint

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Be careful not to direct your students directly to his site though because there are some inappropriate comments and stuff. Anyway I hope you find this as funny as I did.

Also, here are some resources for using PowerPoint effectively:

Unleashing the Power of PowerPoint
Teaching and Learning with Technology - how-to guides, templates, student rubrics, and more
Active Lecturing: The Potential of PowerPoint
Student Presentation Tips from About.com

Do you have any other suggestions for using and teaching PowerPoint? Let me know.

Summer of Learning

After taking some time to relax and decompress after the school year ends, sign up for some free online professional development. The following three sites provide FREE workshops and courses. You can use them to earn pd hours/credits and learn a few new strategies for the coming school year. Check them out and let me know if you know of any other free online professional development.

• High-quality, free professional development from Annenberg Media at Learner.org. Workshops and courses consist of video, print, and Web components that can be used in group sessions or on your own. They recommend participating with a group to get the benefits from discussion with your colleagues, including participants around the country on our email discussion lists called Channel-Talk. They provide Certificates of Participation to those working in groups. These certificates may be used for in service or re-certification credit. Graduate credit is available for courses and most workshops for a reasonable cost.

• Teacher to Teacher eLearning Workshops from the US Department of Education. A variety of web-based workshops for professional development hours/credits.

• Concept to Classroom This site features a series of FREE, self-paced workshops covering a wide variety of hot topics in education. Some of the workshops are based in theory, some are based in methodology - but all of the workshops include plenty of tips and strategies for making classrooms work.
  

Just For Fun - On the Last Days

Are you still looking for some activities for the last days of school? Here are some activities just for fun. These activities are great for developing teamwork and social skills, and they really energize your students!

Engineering-Type Tasks for students to do in teams (Some of these are from ZoomSci)

• Egg-Bungee-Jump - Create a bungee-jump ride for an egg using rubber bands, nylons, pennies, newspaper, scissors, and a ruler. Your egg must come within 2 inches of the floor!
• Have students build the tallest tower using only two sheets of newspaper.
• Design a container that will stop an egg from breaking when it is dropped from a height of ten feet. Teams can only use ten straws, ten popsicle sticks, and one meters of tape.
• Design and make a Puff-mobile using two straws, 4 life savers, 1 piece of paper, 4 paper clips, and 12 inches of tape. Have teams race against each other.
• Create a flinker (an object that doesn't float to the top or sink to the bottom of a container of water, it just "flinks" in the middle for atleast 10 seconds) using styrofoam peanuts, string, and pennies/washers.
• Build a geodesic dome.
  

Outdoor Games and Relays

• Marshmallow Toss - In pairs, have one student hold a paper cup in his mouth and the other try to toss a marshmallow into the partners cup. Have pairs compete with other pairs. Increase the distance between the partners in each round until there is a winner.
• Backpack Relay - Each team has a backpack filled with one textbook, one folder, a pencil case, and a notebook. When you yell "Go" the first player runs to the end of the playing field, unzips the backpack and empties the contents. Then the player puts the backpack on and runs back to his team. He gives the backpack to next teammate who puts in on and runs to the end of the playing field to fill it up again. Repeat until all players have worn the backpack.
• Boom (From ZoomGames)- Have each group of three students blow up 10 balloons. The object of the game is to be the first team to pop 10 balloons. The teams line up in front of their buckets. The first player from each team passes a balloon to the second player through her legs. The second player passes the balloon to the third player over his head. The third player sits on the balloon and pops it. Then everybody switches positions so the third player now goes to the front of line. The first team to pop their balloons wins.
• Summer Fun Relay (From ZoomGames)- To play, you need a large beach bags for each team and a set of summer items for each team, with objects like: a beach hat, beach umbrella, visor, sunglasses, inflatable ducky inner tube, beach chair, foam surfboard, or anything else you'd find at the beach.Players split up into 2 teams of 3. The first player on each team runs down to the beach bag, puts on all of the sun safety items over their clothes, and runs back to the starting line, taking off all the items and putting them back in the bag. Then they run back and put the full bag back at the end of the course and run back to their team. The next player runs down to the bag and does same thing.
  

Spencer Kagan wrote a GREAT book, Silly Sports and Goofy Games. Here are some games from it. Freezer Tag, Balloon Bounce, EscortRelay, and Telemime. These activities can be used throughout the school year, not just at the end, to incorporate play time in your class at any grade level. Why should you include play time? Here are ten reasons from Spencer Kagan from his article about Silly Sports and Goofy Games:

1. Character Education
2. Emotional Intelligence
3. Positive Social Orientation
4. Creativity
5. Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence
6. Process Orientation
7. Equal Participation
8. Engagement
9. Instinctual Playfulness
10. Brain-Friendly Instruction

Help support TeacherHacks Blog by purchasing Silly Sports and Goofy Games or one of the other books below.

What are your favorite fun activities? Leave a comment! Check back for more activities "Just For Fun!"