Lesson Title: Putting PowerPoint to Work
Curriculum Area: Social Studies
Technology Strand: Multimedia/Presentation
Grade Level: 6
 
Essential Question: How do you create a slideshow to illustrate interesting and essential information about a particular country?
 
A Activity Summary Students will research a European country, selected by the student or assigned by the teacher. They will then create a nonlinear PowerPoint slideshow highlighting the major facts found about their country. In using PowerPoint, students will learn how to add music and incorporate transitions and builds on their slides.
C Curriculum Social Studies
2.01 Identify key physical characteristics such as land forms, water forms, and climate, and evaluate their influence on the development of cultures in selected South American and European regions.
11.03 Compare characteristics of political, economic, religious, and social institutions of selected cultures, and evaluate their similarities and differences.
T Technology Multimedia/Presentation
2.08 Use menu/tool bar features to edit/modify/revise multimedia projects to present content information for a different audience and purpose.  
 
Activating Strategies
Prior to participating in this multimedia lesson, students will gather information about a European country and record the information onto their data sheet. (Refer to the lesson plan: A Tour of Europe - Data Collection)
Have students create a storyboard (print and duplicate the file: Country_Storyboard) for the presentation they will create, about the country they have researched.

Review with students the basics of creating a slideshow: creating a slide, choosing a slide format and changing background, adding text and pictures, and editing the text and picture.
 
Technology Vocabulary: Multimedia Vocabulary
Detailed Technology Instructions: PowerPoint_Basics.doc
 
Cognitive Teaching Strategies
Explain to the students that their task is to create an interesting and factual, nonlinear multimedia presentation about a European country that they have previously researched. They will be adding hyperlinks, sound and transitions to make the show interesting.

Demonstrate (using the directions from the "PowerPoint_Basics" help document) how to add a hyperlink, music and sound to a slide. Then show students how to use "transitions" between slides and "builds" on a slide to make them more interesting and to emphasize important elements.

Students will create a TITLE slide, a REFERENCES slide and then at least one slide on each of the categories they researched.
The slide show should have the following slides:
Slide 1: Title - Include the name of the country and a list of all of the categories in the presentation. The names of the categories to include are listed below beside their slide number. Slide 2: General Information
Slide 3: Geography
Slide 4: Government
Slide 5: Economy
Slide 6: People
Slide 7: Transportation.
Slide 8: References
They may also choose to include a slide on "Interesting Facts" that don't seem to fit under any of the other categories.

A hyperlink will be created on each category name on the title slide so that the viewer can click on the category and jump to the slide. Directions for creating a hyperlink can be found in PowerPoint_Basics.
An Action Button should be created on each slide, 2 through 8, with the hyperlink setting to return the viewer to the title slide.
This activity will take several class periods to complete.
Teacher tip: This is an extensive project and modifications may be made to meet the needs and abilities of your students. For example, two students may work on a slide show collaboratively and the two presentations can be hyperlinked together.
 
Summary Strategies
Have each group of students critique the slideshow completed by another group before presentations are given. Have each group present their slideshow presentation. The slideshow will be evaluated based on the criteria in the PowerPoint_Rubric.
 
Resources
Click for directions on how to download files on a Windows computer. 
Multimedia Vocabulary sheet
PowerPoint software

Microsoft Word documents:
A Tour of Europe "datasheet"
European "Country_Storyboard"
"PowerPoint_Rubric"
How to Create Hyperlinks for Nonlinear PowerPoint Slide Show - (filename: Hyperlink)

Websites http://www.lonelyplanet.com
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook
http://www.atlapedia.com
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/bgn
http://www.noodletools.com (for creating a source citation)

Microsoft Word Files
datasheet.doc
Country_Storyboard.doc
PowerPoint_Rubric.doc
Hyperlink.doc
How to Create Hyperlinks for Nonlinear PowerPoint Slide Show
How to Cite an Online Reference
Web Resources
 
 
Re-teaching and Enrichment Activities
Students can add additional slides to their presentation as time allows.
Follow this lesson with Communicating with European Students - ePALS where students will use ePALS to communicate with a school class in their country to ask for information of interest to the students such as Holidays, Favorite Foods, Traditions, Sports, Pets, etc.
Take the project a step further by doing a comparison of categories to those of North Carolina (Compare and Contrast European Countries to North Carolina)

The concept for this lesson plan was submitted by
Gwen Varsamis and  Syble Isbister
Prescott Technology Center, Data last modified: 8/12/2006