Graduate coursework generally includes content that is theoretically oriented. Students often find theoretical content difficult to comprehend, explain, and apply. Requiring students to collaborate in teams to analyze readings on curriculum theory and to develop accessible PowerPoint presentations using LecShare Pro software enhanced their comprehension. The resulting presentations are accessible to students with visual and hearing impairments and also can enhance the learning of students who are English-language learners.
This project exemplifies how to address instructional challenges faced by those with visual and/or hearing impairments through the use of LecShare Pro for PowerPoint presentations.
Thanks to the energy and persistence that students in EDUC 633 Pedagogy contributed to creating LecShare Pro PowerPoint Presentations during the fall 2006 semester, the several resources are now available for review by other students, faculty, and staff interested in learning how to utilize this software.
LecShare Pro allows users to incorporate accessibility features that can make the content more readily comprehensible to differently-abled students. The software permits users to integrate written and audio narrations of PowerPoint slides into an accessible video that plays using the QuickTime plug-in for web browsing software.
Permission was given to Sally Botzler and Joan Van Duzer to share the Power Point presentations by students who participated. The students worked in teams to create the presentations about theoretically-based content in four chapters of the course text Fundamentals of Curriculum: Passion and Professionalism by Decker F. Walker (Second Edition, 2003). To get things started, Sally and Joan created the presentation for the first chapter.
This project includes five LecShare Pro presentations and was completed in fall 2006 in Sally Botzler’s EDUC 633 Pedagogy class with graduate students enrolled in the Master of Arts degree program at Humboldt State University. Joan Van Duzer, the Instructional Technologist in the College of Professional Studies, provided extensive technical assistance both to Sally and to the graduate students as they developed their LecShare Pro presentations.
For those who wish to seek additional information, e-mail addresses of the students who created each presentation are provided along with hyperlinks to all presentations.
Preface: The Curriculum Problem; Part 1: Perspectives; Chapter 1: Curriculum Work, prepared by Sally Botzler and Joan Van Duzer
Chapter 2: Traditions of American Curriculum, prepared by Amber Cron and Frankie Huey
Chapter 3: Curriculum
Theories, prepared by Alissa Stone and Dawnté Thomas
Chapter 4:
Curriculum Reform, prepared by Tahnia Campbell, Mindy Fattig and Sheri Jensen
Chapter 5:
Curriculum Studies, prepared by Megan Day and Melanie Nannizzi
Note: Updating QuickTime to version 7.1.6 minimizes technical difficulties
in viewing the movies for this project.