Almost 25 years ago, Presenter for the Macintosh II was the start of a revolution in presentations, in much the same way that word processing was a revolution in writing. Later, Microsoft bought Presenter and renamed it PowerPoint. The advantages for well-done presentations with PowerPoint are evident. With the popularity, however, there are critics and unengaged audiences. To be fair, it isn’t necessarily PowerPoints fault that a presentation is bad. PowerPoint Bullets don’t kill people; people kill people. It is the case, however, that the omnipresence of PowerPoints means that students won’t be excited just because the room goes dark and a PowerPoint is being shown.

The hottest name in science presentations is Prezi, which creates a non-linear way to depict concepts and multimedia. Prezi calls itself “the zooming presentation editor,” which captures part of it but it really should be called an “animated zooming presentation creator.” The really engaging part is how it zooms to different parts. Take this Prezi presentation that is designed to be an introductory lesson on physics. You can’t appreciate how cool the zooming works until you see Prezi in action. You fly about the word Physics as students are brought to topics they will learn throughout the year.

A Prezi presentation introducing physics.

Great teachers view the world and wonder how can I use this in my teaching. There are teachers who see a tool and instantly think about how they can use it to present science better. Then, there are those that instantly think about how they can put it into students’ hands so they can use it to learn science. Check out this Prezi, which is designed to present info for students to do a “Solar System Prezi-tation.”

Prezis are kept on the internet, so you can access other teacher-created science prezi-tations. Hopefully, they will categorize their site but for now you can do a keyword search. I did a search for “photosynthesis” and found 650 presentations. You can easily have your students go to these websites. I like Adaptive Curriculum because you can embed internet resources with the assigned Activity Objects.

A lesson plan from Adaptive Curriculum includes Activity Objects and Internet resources.

Further, if you believe in the importance of concept mapping in science education (as I do), then Prezi is a great tool for this as well. You can present teacher created or student created concept maps (see below).

But if you are going to Prezi, you better get their quick. This tool will grow in popularity until one day students might say, “I keep getting motion sickness in all my classes from Prezi. Can we please go back to PowerPoints?”

The videos on television show some of the massive destruction and the human toll of the recent earthquake in Haiti. It is difficult to imagine the suffering of the Haitian people. It is an unfortunate example of the devastation of a magnitude 7 earthquake.

It is natural to wonder why or how. When students are ready, teachers may want to discuss  earthquakes and their causes.

The folks at IRIS have a website with a PowerPoint presentation and Quicktime movie that explain a lot of details associated with this particular earthquake and earthquakes in general. The PowerPoint has excellent pictures of the destruction to buildings, without presenting images of human suffering that would be difficult for some students. The image to the right is taken from the PowerPoint.

IRIS (AKA the Incorporated Research Institutes for Seismology) has lots of resources for learning about earthquakes including SeisMac 2.0 which allows Macintosh computers to become seismographs.

In the quest for Science Literacy, we strive to give students an understanding of natural events before they happen. Adaptive Curriculum has two strong Activity Objects, one is on determining the magnitude of an earthquake and the other is determining the location of the earthquake. The image below is from “Earthquakes: Measuring Magnitude.“

As the novelty of PowerPoint presentations in the K-12 classroom fades, the dim lights and streams of text could inspire sleep instead of excitement in science. There are ways that science can be made interesting through PowerPoints. Interactions, great pictures and graphics can really help make a point and share a story.

Fortunately many teachers and people who support education are willing to share their efforts. Here are several powerful sites for science PowerPoint presentations. Of course, with any collections of resources, not all are great so you must browse through and pick and modify. I think combinations of interactive and exciting elements from diverse PowerPoints can make you have a presentation with many strong elements but that is tailored for your students and curriculum. 

Impressive Large Collections

Pete's Science PPTs

Pete’s Science PowerPoints This site has layers and layers of ppt resources.  

World of Teaching: Science  Good PowerPoint presentations that are rated and organized by biology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and physics.

Science by Jefferson County Schools 

Earth Science and Astronomy and Elementry Science at Nebo School District

Smaller Niche Collections

Chalkbored PPT Title

Powerpoint Physics These present high school level physics PPTs that are animated.

Neuro-Jeopardy - Jeopardy games are a popular review mechanism. This one is on neurobiology. 

Normal Community High School Biology Powerpoints I honestly thought this was a national organization when I saw the layout and the biology PowerPoints. This is a great achievement!

Chalkbored Chemistry Powerpoints These folks show some of the promise in this medium. 

Our Solar System: Tech Learning Center

Resources for Sharing PowerPoints

SlideShare

Assigning Activity Objects and PPTs with Adaptive Curriculum

Adaptive Curriculum. With student subscriptions teachers not only assign great interactive science Activity Objects but they can also assign or provide any online resources. So students can easily access great PowerPoint presentations without remembering complicated addresses. For instance in the picture to the right a lesson plan is being created with the Activity Object “Color Mixing: Paints and Lights” and is combined with two PowerPoint presentations.