Post #3

Chapter 3 introduces EME 2040 to one of my "favorite" pieces of software...Powerpoint. I've often found the use of Powerpoint, be it in an educational or business setting, to be something of a double-edged sword. In the Air Force, it wasn't too uncommon to hear the phrase "death by powerpoint" tossed around pretty regularly. Ever since Powerpoint was hailed as the definitive way of presenting information in a multi-sensory way, people have formed a quasi-dependancy on it. It seems that using Powerpoint as a crutch would be especially dangerous to teachers at the secondary level, allowing them to inundiate their students with animated slides instead of having to interact with them on a deeper level. Flashy slide transitions aren't a substitute for quality content, after all.

On the upside, Powerpoint does allow teachers to integrate multimedia into their content in a relatively seamless manner. Being able to embed a short film clip into a powerpoint slide is slightly less intrusive than interrupting a lecture to toss in a dvd or VHS tape. The same, of course, holds for sound bites and pictures.

So, for the new skills portion of the blog...I'd say that I've learned a few new tricks in Word thanks to our SAM lesson. Of course, I wasn't entirely sure that I needed to know how to further manipulate cheesy WordArt, but hey, it's something.

On the personal side of things, my birthday was this weekend. Birthdays have become less and less exciting as I continue my progressive slide to 30, though, so I wasn't that ecstatic about it. It was two-for-one drinks at Chili's, though, so there's that!