Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCaptcha and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Comments

  1. Hi Bonni,

    Thank you so much for this podcast. I appreciate the tips and tricks that you’ve shared in this episode. PowerPoint and similar programs have become integral to my teaching and to my lesson planning. I’m always looking for alternatives, though, because I’m not 100% convinced that my use of PowerPoint is the best way to engage my students.

    However, one reason that I continue to use Google Slides–with more text than I would prefer–is that I teach university-level English language learners in Thailand. As I plan my slides, I take care to plan the language that I want to use in class so that the vocabulary and sentence structure are as accessible as possible for my students. Reading the text that I have on my slides not only ensures that I’m using the most appropriate language I can, but also gives my students a chance to both listen to and read the information as I’m saying it. Of course, I add information or examples that aren’t on the slides, but I’m sure that the ability to read the main points of my lecture is useful to my students. On days when I have a particularly heavy information load, I make a copy of the slides for my students to print out in which I’ve left a few blanks for them to fill in. Taking notes is an important part of learning, but sometimes there’s just so much for my students to write and waiting for them to copy every last word (which they really want to do) breaks up the flow of the lesson too much.

    All that to say, thank you Bonni and Dave for this fabulous episode, and thank you Bonnie for this podcast–it has inspired me so much in the past 6 months!

    • Thanks for this kind, encouraging email, Jena. Glad that the podcast is proving beneficial to you. I couldn’t agree more with you when you write about slide decks not being the best way to engage students, in some (many?) cases.

Trackbacks