PowerPoint Fast Lane

Let me start by stating that I am far from a PowerPoint Guru. But even an old-school whiteboard warrior like me can learn to use PowerPoint presentations to improve instruction. PowerPoint presentations are built like an electronic slide show. I suspect that if you are younger than 30 years old you might not have ever seen an ACTUAL slide show. Suffice it to say, making a PowerPoint presentation is SOO much easier than making an actual slide show. The slide show format displays pictures in a sequence while a presenter narrates or discusses the slides. PowerPoint presentations retain this overall organization, but they allow a great deal more flexibility. It is possible to add animation, audio, video, time the appearance of different elements, and use interactive responses just to name a few. However, the most common presentation is still a series of pictures. It can take quite a while to select pictures individually, place them, and add titles. This can all be done quickly by inserting a photo album. To create a presentation quickly, follow the following steps.

1. Take a bunch of cool pictures with your digital camera.
2. Always take more than one picture of each item using different light levels and angles. It does not take much longer and will save you time in the end. You can’t always tell the quality of the picture using the small LCD screen on the camera.
3. Import the pictures into a folder on your computer. Make sure the folder is located where you can find it and named something appropriate – “Way Cool Pictures”
4. Start PowerPoint and click on “Insert” in the ribbon at the top.
5. Click on “Photo Album” and then choose “New Photo Album”
6. In the box that opens, click on the “File/Disk” button at the top left to open a file selector dialog.
7. Navigate to the folder containing your pictures and select the pictures you want.
8. You can select individually by holding down the “Ctrl” key down as you click each picture; or you can select a group by clicking on one picture, holding down the shift key, and then clicking on the last picture.
9. After selecting your pictures, click “Insert” at the bottom right of the dialogue box.
10. The next dialogue box shows a list of your pictures. You can rearrange their order or delete pictures you don’t like here.
11. At the bottom of this dialogue box you can choose how many pictures per slide and whether or not you want a title.
12. Next, choose the type of frame around the picture and any theme you want.
13. Finally, click “Create” at the bottom and your new presentation will be created.
14. You can now go back and fill in the titles for each slide. Just click where it says “Click to add title” on the slide and type in the title for that slide.

If you are using Fundamentals of HVAC/R, you can download all the supporting PowerPoint presentations at Download. As I said at the outset, what I don’t know about PowerPoint presentations would fill a book. Fortunately I have friends in the know. Gary Reecher sent me this link to Microsoft’s site Twelve Tips to Better PowerPoint Presentations. It is well worth your time. If you would like to have someone do the heavy lifting for you, you can’t do better than the presentations the Dick Wirz puts together. You can find out more about his material at

Dick & Irene Wirz

Refrigeration Training Services, LLC

6609 Briarcroft Street

Clifton, VA 20124

703-830-6004

teacherwirz@cox.net

idwirz@cox.net

Do You YouTube?

Electronic social networking has made it possible for people to enjoy global communication with millions of people who share common interests. HVAC/R is no exception. Take a look around the web and you can quickly find many discussion forums, web sites, and media aimed at HVAC/R technicians. You have to exercise some discipline when perusing web materials because it is easy to while away hours of time reading and viewing content on subjects that you are interested in. YouTube is especially addicting because they have figured out how to keep feeding you video clips that are related to what you are watching. If you start looking at clips of compressors, more and more compressor clips will keep coming up in the side bar for you to view. However, my discussion is not how to avoid internet addition, but how to employ internet addiction for teaching purposes. The easiest way is simply to give your students unfettered access to the web, point them to a list YouTube clips, and stand back. This approach does come with some amount of risk because everything is on YouTube. The very openness of the format which encourages sharing and communication also aids in the transmission of inaccurate or even offensive ideas. There are oscillating parts on YouTube videos that are not attached to compressors! For this reason, many schools filter or restrict online material so severely that it is not really possible to use YouTube live. Many schools block sites like YouTube entirely. If that is the case, you can still view and download the videos at home and then take them to school. This gives you control over what is seen and allows your students access to the material. Although YouTube does not provide point and click ability to download their files, many people provide sites or programs to do it. I use a free program called YouTube Downloader. It is available on CNET, a trustworthy site for downloadable computer files. I then download the files onto a jump drive to take to school.

There are literally hundreds of video clips on YouTube that are helpful in HVAC/R, but my favorites are clips that show things you can’t see elsewhere. A gentleman in Australia has several clips of compressors he has cut open. Many of them operate. Seeing the movable scroll on a scroll compressor orbit as the compressor is energized is way cool! I must admit that seeing him cutting open compressors with a grinder, sparks flying appeals to the kid in me! Before you run out and start sawing up compressors, why not take a look at what he has already done. To help you get started on your internet addiction, I have included a short list of YouTube compressor videos to whet your appetite. The titles are hyperlinked, just click on the title to go to the video.

Open Scroll 3

Off with its head

Daikin Relucance DC Swing Compressor

30 HP Carlyle Semi

Kirby Reciprocating Compressor

Managing Large Group Labs

The easiest way to manage your lab is to have one lab instructor for every five students. I have actually taught lab classes where we had this ratio and it was a lot of fun. We were able to spend a lot of time with each student and we were able to do things you just can’t do with larger groups. So what if you have more like 20 students per lab instructor? It is still possible to give them a good lab experience, but a lot more planning and organizing will be required up front, and there will be things that are just not practical. One management technique is to split up large groups into smaller ones and schedule them at different times, effectively making several smaller lab classes. Of course this means you must spend more time than usual since you will be repeating the lab for each group. This may not be an option for everyone depending upon the number of instructors, students, lab equipment, and available lab time. For most of us, there will come a time when we have to work with larger groups in the lab.

A common technique is to have students work in groups. I try to avoid this if possible because it often means a couple of confident students do the work and the rest of the group watches and writes down the results. In group projects, you can see the 80/20 rule at work: 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. However, this can be managed if you know it is going to occur. Ask every member of the group a question that requires an understanding of the process. For example, if the group is measuring the superheat on an air conditioning system you might ask different students

• What is superheat?
• What measurements are required?
• How did you arrive at the current superheat?
• What readings are necessary to use the manufacturer’s superheat charging chart?
• What does the system charging chart say the superheat should be?
• What does this system's superheat tell us about the system?

If they know they are going to be asked to perform a task or answer a question, they will at least pay more attention to what is going on.

Some skills are so important, every student must perform them for you individually. Lighting an oxy-acetylene torch is one example. An issue with large groups is simply the amount of equipment and tools available. Most of us would be hard pressed to come up with 15 oxyacetylene torch sets so that every student could have their own. Besides, I really do NOT WANT to have more than three rookies working torches at the same time. Once when I had a class of 18 students who needed to learn to braze, I worried about how I was going to teach all of them to handle an oxyacetylene torch safely. What I did was to demonstrate, as I always do and then ask questions to see what people remembered. We then went back over the procedure, paying particular attention to things that I felt they had missed the first time. Finally, I lined them up and had each student turn on the tanks, set the regulators, light the torch, adjust the flame, shut off the flame, and shut down the torch leaving it ready for the next student. If they hesitated, they repeated the process. I noticed that the students got progressively better, which was odd because the most confident students had stepped forward first. When I remarked to one student on how quickly and confidently he performed the task he replied “I saw it done 10 times before I had to do it.” In other words, the students waiting in line learned through the experience of their fellow students. This made me feel less guilty about having everyone wait in line to work with me. This method works well for procedures that can be demonstrated in a few minutes such as lighting torches, soldering, brazing, or installing gauges. If the students use their time wisely and pay attention to what is going on they will learn by watching others and everyone leaves with an important skill they did not have the day before.

Delivery Styles - Lecture

I am sometimes asked which instructional delivery system I think is best: traditional lecture lab, self paced, or computer aided and online. Like a trick question, the answer is all of the above. Each method has strengths and weaknesses. I have used each at different times in my career and enjoyed the advantages and suffered the frustrations of each of these delivery styles. Most people are familiar with the lecture format. In fact, to many people the other formats are not really teaching. I do not agree with that sentiment, but I understand why people sometimes feel that way. I will talk today about the lecture format and cover the others in later columns.

Undoubtedly, the lecture format is efficient at disseminating information to large numbers of people. If we are honest, it also appeals to the ham in most instructors: we like to talk! I will admit that I enjoy lecturing, and I believe my students enjoy my lectures. However, I may not be the most objective judge. Lectures can be engaging with good preparation and a well developed style. However, they can also be deadly. The derisive terms “talking head” and “chalk and talk” are well deserved. Did you ever see a video that is basically a picture of someone while lecturing? Usually they are hard to sit through. After watching a few I decided that the reason the videos of my lectures were boring was that the original lectures were boring. I was talking, and talking, and talking and I am sure the students were nodding off. Remember, your job is not to just cover all the topics, it is to teach your students. A big problem with lecture is that people do not tend to retain most of the information they hear, active participation is needed to retain the information. A few ideas to increase student participation are taking notes (not a big hit with students), asking students questions, asking leading questions, regularly entertaining questions from students, or engaging them in a dialogue. I like the dialogue format. Today, I don’t tend to talk to my students as much as have a structured discussion encouraging their participation and asking them questions. Repetition is also good. If something is important, don’t just say it once, say it several times using different approaches. After you think the students know the information, ask some questions to find out.

Speaking style and delivery is important, but can vary a great deal from one person to the next. In general, you need to be interested in what you are saying. Students can hear the interest and passion in your voice. They can also hear disinterest and lethargy. You need to be interested and excited about your field. Humor works for some speakers, everyone loves to laugh. Don’t feel compelled to tell a joke, just use humor if it comes naturally. Stay away from jokes involving off color, racial, religious, or political jokes. Jokes on yourself are fairly safe and students enjoy a laugh at the instructor’s expense. Most people find stories more engaging than a recitation of facts. Having taught for many years, I have a large body of stories to draw on.

Visual aids are great for creating interest. Rather than draw a crude diagram of something on the board, pass around examples of the real thing. If you have a video projector and document camera you can zoom in on parts and show details to the whole class that are not easily visible even to someone holding the object. The table in front of where I lecture is usually a mess because it is covered in stuff I brought in from the lab to show. The ultimate visual aid was a complete transport refrigeration unit sitting in the corner of the class room when we were teaching transport refrigeration. Students disassembled the unit, brought the frame and pieces into the class room, and then reassembled the unit in the corner. When I talked about the location of parts I could actually put my hand on the part on the unit. We gave tests using sticky notes attached to components and students were required to identify components. They would come up, look at the component labeled #1, and write down its name and function. That room is now used for an Interior design class and for some reason they did not want a refer unit in the corner, so we disassembled it and took it out of the room.

Powerpoint presentations can also help, but avoid letting the powerpoint presentation BE the lecture. Nothing is more boring than hearing someone read the text of a powerpoint presentation. I remember being surprised when several students mentioned to me that another instructor’s classes were boring. This instructor had really world class powerpoints that he had developed. They were complete with movement, animation, great details, and good photos. In fact I was rather envious of them. However, the students said they started to doze off as soon as the lights were out. They were not actively participating and they tuned out. This is not to say you shouldn’t use powerpoint presentations, just remember that they are a supplement, not a replacement.

Personally I feel that the biggest weakness of traditional lecture lab is the lab component when five people are assigned to work together on something that really only requires one person. I will leave that discussion for next time.