Linda the Educator

Microsoft's Office PowerPoint has been used in some form or another by educators for many years. The presentation program was originally developed in the latter part of the 1980s " designed to facilitate visual demonstrations for group presentations in the business environment" (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2012, para. 2). Thankfully, Microsoft has kept the software up-to-date in the continuously evolving digital landscape and has wide applications across business, education and community organisations.  I can vaguely recall my teachers occasionally using PowerPoint when I was a young warthog in high school *cough, nearly 30 years ago, ahem*. They would generate slides using text and images that could be used for handouts and overhead transparencies. Sometimes the school would get real fancy for our annual Awards Presentation Night and project a slideshow including photos of the deserving recipients. These days I have become very familiar with Microsoft's latest version,...

What... Is... The... Point?  Miller and McVee ( 2012 ) use this anecdotal expression in their preface to underpin the relativity and importance of digital media in learning. To be honest, it was the most relatable anecdote I've read in a long while. This ol' girl has been learning a lot about digital media of late but I can now clearly see how beneficial being digital media literate can be used in learning and teaching. What is media? Essentially, a channel of communication and its versatility can be utilised in many forms in the classroom. It can be used as a tool for direct instruction, it can be an interactive learning method, and it can be a source for student-created media. When I thought about this for a hot second, I instantly recalled my 'Introduction to Business' unit at CQUni (a brilliant university for distance learning, by the way - check them out here ), and how I was the student who created my own media for an assessment. At first, it felt like a mammoth t...