LA CENTRALIDAD DEL TRABAJO

The effectiveness of pedagogical interactions is greatly influenced by functional preparation of future teachers, who when becoming coordinators of teaching/learning processes have the mission to pass on content, to stimulate cognitive development and to shape anticipated attitudes in a clear and understandable way as fully and efficiently as it is possible. For this reason, every contemporary teacher should have the ability to use computer hardware and, above all, to prepare a multimedia presentation together with its comprehensive array of components. It is therefore crucial that in the course of teacher training, students become acquainted with the methods of design, implementation and use of multimedia communication.

Multimedia presentations, both linear and non-linear, are present in various areas of higher education. For demonstrative/illustrative reasons, they are used both in lectures and during classes. However in the next section, examples of activities were shown in which these tools are used directly by learners.

• Presentation during ICT classes

Deepening the ability to create multimedia presentations constitutes one of the objectives of the ICT course run at the beginning of teacher training at the University of Silesia. Students are trained extensively with the aim of expansion of their ICT competence in order to make use of it at further stages of their university course and later as future teachers. This complies

1 _{In the analysed group of students of pedagogy who participated in the survey at the beginning of the first}

semester of their studies, none of the respondents (N=48) was able to name more than one program for creating multimedia presentations. In responses only Microsoft PowerPoint was present.

31

with the assumption that every teacher, and more broadly: educator, should be prepared to use various ICT tools in their own individual work and when teaching, which entails the use of ICT terminology, software, hardware and methods (Baron-Polańczyk, 2011:77). The participants are meant to master the skill of creating academic presentations (by appropriately manipulating its text and graphics, colours, dynamics and animation) both in terms of content, technical aspect, as well as hobby-oriented presentations based on photographs and videos. Microsoft PowerPoint is primarily used. At the beginning of the cycle, students participate in an initial survey, by means of which they assess their ICT skills and knowledge. When asked for an opinion on their level of expertise in the use of MS PowerPoint, they mostly acknowledge that their competence in this area is average (66.67%). Only a small percentage of respondents rate their level highly (8.33%). Survey findings related to this aspect are presented in Table 1 by means of comparison between several programs.

Level of expertise in a given program

Selected computer programs or groups of programs

MS Word MS Excel MS PowerPoint Graphic

programs (not in the MS Office

package)

No. % No. % No. % No. %

Good 41 85.42 10 20.83 4 8.33 1 2.08

Average 6 12.50 12 25.00 32 66.67 15 31.25

Weak 1 2.08 26 54.17 12 25.00 32 66.67

Tab. 1: Self-assessment of the level of expertise and the ability to use computer programs selected among first year students (N=48)

Interestingly, when students wrote about their expectations towards the course and about the possibilities of the use of ICT in their future teaching work, they often pointed to the creation of multimedia presentations as an important task. Computer classes are designed to prepare them for this purpose by practicing the use of the majority of functions available in MS PowerPoint and by pointing to alternative presentation software.

• WebQuest using a multimedia presentation

Future pedagogues test educational use of presentations by performing educational projects on other objects by means of the WebQuest method. Slideshow is in this case only part of a broader activity in which students acquire knowledge of how by means of a presentation to create a framework for a comprehensive, even several-months-long project that may be used in the classroom. Project Method, focused on the exploration of the participating entities, usually makes use of a computer and the Internet and bases on pre-designed websites. A properly constructed presentation, which will point to the six stages of the traditional WebQuest by means of hyperlinks, may constitute an effective alternative. Presentations prepared in MS PowerPoint can also be used in educational quizzes, which are already in use in the education of children, i.e. in evaluation, systematisation and/or checking knowledge.

• Slides used during Shadow Theatre Art classes

Workshops on creativity and artistic expression, based on the use of shadow theatre, constitute a less obvious example of the use of multimedia presentations. In the academic year 2013/2014, a group of over fifty students of pedagogy, divided into eight teams for a period of one semester, created a show in which they made use of light, shadow, some props and their own bodies to tell a story. In this type of activities, multimedia presentation may be a tool assisting at the creation of stage sets. A slide displayed by means of a projector is a perfect

32

backdrop for individual shots and scene sequences. Without being a carrier of information, presentation may in this case fulfil a completely different role.