#PowerPoint #DigitalLearning #AuthenticLearning #ActiveLearning #Collaboration #Office365 #HumanBodySystems #Schoology #21stCenturyLearners #Science #MiddleSchool #iTeachMiddle #7thGrade

All of the students in my district have an Office 365 account which provides them with the office suite.

A cool feature of PowerPoint Online is the option to set up a PowerPoint that is shared and editable with people in your organization.

I created a generic PowerPoint over five of the human body systems. The PowerPoint had a title slide, a slide that listed the body systems, a slide with instructions, and three slides for each system. I then saved a copy of the PowerPoint and changed the title for each of my classes and uploaded the links to my Schoology courses.

In my Schoology course, I put several online resources or articles for each system. This took the longest, I ‘googled’ each system with words like ‘kids’ and ‘teens’ until I found 5-8 resources for each system and linked them in the corresponding folder.

I put my students in groups of 5-6, gave them three laptops, assigned ONE body system per group, showed them how to access the resources and PowerPoint, and told them to be creative and put all of the information they use in their own words.

It was a hit!

Students were able to work collaboratively to research and put together a resource that was kept in Schoology and used for students as a resources to study.

We ended up spending two and a half class periods putting the information together and half of a period presenting the information.

Side Note 1: Tell students to stay in their slides ONLY. Let students know you can see if someone else is in your slides and to pay attention if someone is there that shouldn’t be!

Side Note 2: Students should not change the background because they can potentially change the formatting on all of the slides, while it is an easily fix, students freak out.

Side Note 3: Turn off the editing feature when you’re done.