Powerpoint Craze!

Well it seems like everyone is doing his/her Powerpoint presentation today. I woke up to find the kids on the computer, working on their 'current interest'; H - monkeys, N - cats, S -horses.

My urge to use the computer had to be suppressed because I didn't want to shoo them off while they're doing something rather 'beneficial' (at least to my schooled mindset). H and N had started on their Powerpoint files yesterday, and S, seeing both of them glued to the computer, followed suit, and shooed N off the computer upstairs, claiming that N had used the computer all day yesterday to work on PPT. Fancy that! Usually you shoo your sibling off the computer because you want to play a computer game!

I looked at N's PPT, and it turned out that she had merely googled the different breed of cats, copied and pasted the information about them in her PPT slides. So we talked about plagiarism, (again). The next time I looked at it, she had changed some things, but S said,

"No, she only changed a few words."

We talked about plagiarism again.

"But I don't know what to write," lamented N.

"See here, the graph. Maybe you can write, oh, this cat is very gentle, from looking at the docility level from the graph," I said.

After that I think she got the idea.

As for H, he's on a roll with his monkey business!

"Ummi, do you know the difference between ape and monkeys?"

"No."

"Apes don't have tails!"

"Oh!" Now, I really didn't know that. That was news to me. Pretty interesting!

I found dictionary.com opened as tabs on the browser. Apparently, they were looking up words they don't understand from what they were reading on their subject matter.

"Ummi, what's mutilated?"

"Oh, it means when you cut off limbs, and pieces of your body. Hamzah Abdul Mutallib was mutilated because Hind ripped his liver out."

He looked at me, glasses sliding down his nose, giving him that old professor look, and nodded.

"Colobus is Greek for mutilated."

Ahh...I received another interesting piece of information.

Were I to write down all that they're doing now, educationalesed of course, it would probably look like this:

S:

Science: Hands on experience observing wildlife in a nearby creek. Learned to distinguish a groundhog from a beaver. Observed a beaver/groundhog hole. Looked up information about beavers/groundhogs in books and the internet. Used the dictionary to look up words she doesn't know.

Math: Measured out ingredients for making pizza. Used the timer. Counted her savings, and updated it on her online ledger, subtracting and adding new amounts.

Technology: used Microsoft Powerpoint. Looked up information on the internet. Used the online dictionary. Found images on the internet, related to her research, and manipulated them in her Powerpoint slides.

and so on...except I didn't really keep track of all the resources they used. I can see how this might work already.

But for now it seems that we're having Powerpoint Mania. Good thing I didn't let them play outside yesterday, and they're already sick and tired of the computer games.