The Pale Blue Dot

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 from a record distance of 4 billion miles. In this video, Carl Sagan relates his thoughts on a deeper meaning of the photograph.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Review Keynote 08

Presentation software adds path motion, time-saving features

by Franklin N. Tessler

In the four-and-a-half years since its launch, Keynote has matured from a promising but flawed program into a strong performer that outshines Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 (  ) in most areas. Even so, Keynote 3 (  ) suffered from a few surprising omissions, such as tiny thumbnails in the Light Table and lack of support for QuickTime VR. Although Keynote ’08 doesn’t address all my complaints, it’s a must-have for anyone who’s using an earlier version and more compelling than ever for new users.

Smoother workflow

The new version of Keynote retains an uncluttered interface that makes it easy to put together polished presentations with a minimum of fuss, while introducing features that boost efficiency. For example, the Format Bar, an optional ribbon that appears just below the toolbar, lets you adjust fonts, color, shadows, opacity, and more. It’s a simple addition (and one that spans all three iWork programs), but it means less shuffling through Inspector tabs to tweak the look of objects on a slide.

The new Smart Build feature is another huge time-saver that lets you show a series of images without putting them on separate frames or using builds to display them one-by-one. When you set up a Smart Build, a resizable placeholder and a translucent overlay appear on the slide. The overlay, similar to Keynote’s image adjustment window, has a space for you to drag and drop the images that you want to present from the Media Browser or Finder, along with thumbnails of the ones that you’ve chosen so far. When you’re done, Keynote displays the pictures using one of ten special effects, including a turntable that rotates to bring succeeding images into view and another that shows pictures on a spinning cube.

Alas, although you can insert a Smart Build onto a master slide, it won’t function as a placeholder on slides that use that master—if you want to use the same Smart Build effect on several slides, you have to create the builds separately or design the first slide and then duplicate it.

New Auto Correction options, which you activate via Keynote’s preferences, also let you work more quickly by automatically capitalizing words at the beginning of sentences, building bulleted and numbered lists, and replacing text as you type. Although the last feature is mostly intended to perform character substitutions (such as replacing “(r)” with “®”), you can also customize the list of replacements to correct common mistakes (“the” for “hte”) or expand shortcuts into preferred phrases.

Another feature lets people with less than perfect vision choose from one of three magnification levels for the slide thumbnails in the Navigator and Light Table views. Although it’s not as flexible as the variable slider I would have preferred, it’s a welcome addition that saves time by letting you read slides without having to look at them in the Slide Only or Navigator view.

Objects in motion

Despite an impressive roster of motion builds and other effects, animation previously wasn’t Keynote’s strongest suit, requiring cumbersome workarounds or separate programs like Adobe Flash to simulate even simple actions like moving a ball across a floor. Keynote’s support for path-based animation puts an end to that by letting you define exactly how objects move. And that’s not all: in addition to controlling an object’s position, you can specify actions that change its size, rotation, or opacity at any point in time to, for example, simulate a spaceship that grows as it approaches the viewer from a distance.

You create animation paths by building them from straight lines or Bézier curves, one section at a time. Although this approach works well for many applications, plotting out motion along a circle or ellipse means stringing together several Bézier curves. It would be far simpler if you could designate circles and other graphic outlines as motion paths. And, because you have to use Keynote’s fixed-size build drawer to set up the order and timing of movements and other effects, it’s difficult to choreograph multiple objects. So, along with additional options for defining motion paths, a timeline for setting up builds and other effects tops my wish list for a future update to Keynote.

Picture perfect

Other enhancements build on Keynote’s considerable graphics prowess. Picture Frame, a new stroke option in the Graphic Inspector, draws a border around any text or graphic object. You have 12 frame styles to choose from, ranging from simple lines to shadowed borders that are similar to the picture cutouts in some of Keynote’s older themes. Unlike cutouts, which are challenging to produce, you can add or tweak frames with only a few mouse clicks. And, now that Keynote lets you define pictures on master slides as media placeholders, it’s easier than ever to design your own themes.

Another new feature, Instant Alpha, lets you make backgrounds transparent without having to use an external image editor, such as Photoshop. The process works best on pictures with foreground objects that stand out from the background, such as a red company logo set against a white backdrop. When you click on the background, contiguous pixels with similar colors turn purple. As you drag, the range of selected colors shrinks or grows. When you’re satisfied with your selection, press return and the background disappears, leaving the rest of the picture intact. Instant Alpha is no substitute for Photoshop masking, but it performs remarkably well with some images.

Of course, no Keynote update would be complete without a few cool themes and special effects. New build effects include Flame, which makes objects appear or disappear in a blaze, and Confetti, which makes objects self-assemble from or explode into a cloud of specks. (Confetti also makes an appearance as a new transition effect.) The new version also sports nine new themes.

Sight and sound: a mixed bag

Keynote’s support for video is improved, but it’s still imperfect. For example, Keynote no longer automatically begins to play movies the instant they appear, and you can adjust a movie’s start and stop points in the QuickTime Inspector. You can also publish Keynote presentations directly on YouTube. Another new export option lets you save your slideshow in an iPod- or iPhone-compatible format, but you’re limited to fixed or recorded timing, so it’s of limited value if you want to practice a presentation on the go. And Keynote still doesn’t let you interact with QuickTime VR movies during a presentation.

Keynote’s audio features, although better than before, also don’t go far enough. For the first time, you can record a narration for your presentation in Keynote as you watch the slideshow, and most audio remains intact when you export a presentation to Flash. But you still can’t add audio tracks that span only a subset of slides, a feature that makes it challenging to create background music tracks that include several songs.

Macworld’s buying advice

Despite a few rough edges, Keynote ’08 is more impressive than ever. With PowerPoint 2008 slated for release early next year, I’m hoping that the competition will compel Apple to address Keynote’s remaining shortcomings before then.

http://www.macworld.com/article/59529/2007/08/keynote08.html

Microsoft PowerPoint 2008

Presentation software edges closer to the competition

by Franklin N. Tessler

Few products enjoy the market dominance that PowerPoint for Windows does—for most of the world, the words “PowerPoint” and “presentation” are interchangeable. But Mac presenters have had an alternative since January of 2003, when Apple unveiled Keynote (). Although the initial release lagged in a few critical respects, three subsequent updates addressed most of Keynote’s shortcomings and established it as the clear presentation leader for the Mac. Sporting an improved interface and beefed-up graphics capabilities, PowerPoint 2008 catches up to Keynote in a few areas and even exceeds it in some. While it’s still not Keynote’s equal, PowerPoint is sometimes a better practical choice.

PowerPoint’s new look

Many changes to PowerPoint’s user interface are recognizable instantly. The standard toolbar is now built in, and you can opt to display all the toolbars docked or undocked— except the Drawing toolbar, which cannot be docked. When docked, the toolbars are integrated into the main window, resulting in a much cleaner appearance than in PowerPoint 2004. You can also customize any of the toolbars to suit your workflow by dragging commands into or out of them.

In PowerPoint 2008, the dedicated Slide and Outline views are gone, replaced by a three-part Normal View that shows the current slide on a light grey backdrop and speaker’s notes on the bottom. A new pane on the left replaces the old Outline view with a more versatile one that lets you toggle between outline and thumbnail representations of the presentation. Like Keynote’s Navigator, the Slide pane makes it easy to see the current slide in the context of the ones around it, and you can duplicate, delete, or rearrange selected slides. However, there’s no way to arrange the slides hierarchically or hide subgroups of slides the way you can with Keynote.

The Elements Gallery, another new feature, augments PowerPoint more than it does either of the other two Office applications that feature it. Gallery tabs let you insert or make changes to slide themes, layouts, transitions, table styles, charts, SmartArt Graphics, and WordArt. The Layouts gallery is especially helpful, since you can use it to either change the layout of an existing slide or add a new slide with the selected layout. SmartArt Graphics, which convert text bullets to eye-catching graphics, are an effective way to explain complex relationships, although they can detract from a presentation if they’re overused.

Your master’s slides

Nowhere is the difference in design philosophy between PowerPoint and Keynote more apparent than in each program’s implementation of themes, master slides, and layouts. Instead of separate title and slide masters, PowerPoint 2008 supports a single master slide that determines the appearance of background elements and placeholders on all the slide layouts. Set the title text on the master slide to Arial yellow bold, say, and the corresponding text on all the individual slide layouts changes too. Themes, on the other hand, let you specify the background and attributes of all the placeholders on any subset of slides, and provide a way to maintain design consistency.

Keynote, by contrast, doesn’t separate masters and layouts. You can have as many masters as you wish, each with its own background and arrangement of text, graphics elements, and placeholders. (As in PowerPoint, you can apply themes to change the look of an entire presentation in one step.) Although PowerPoint 2008’s model provides considerable flexibility, it’s not as straightforward as Keynote’s approach, and will probably confuse novices and experienced users alike.

A better Toolbox

PowerPoint 2004’s Formatting Palette simplified PowerPoint’s interface by consolidating many commands in one accessible location. In PowerPoint 2008, the revamped Toolbox continues along the same path by further centralizing functions and grouping them more logically. In addition to a Formatting palette with sections that change to let you adjust the attributes of the currently selected object, the Toolbox sports a separate Object palette that lets you insert shapes, symbols, clip art, or pictures onto a slide.

PowerPoint 2008’s clip art library includes the cheesy drawings that are a staple of bad presentations everywhere, but thankfully adds more than 100 photographs with transparent backgrounds. Animation controls get their own Toolbox palette, as do Reference Tools, which let you look up dictionary definitions, thesaurus entries, translations, and more. The remaining palettes let you access PowerPoint’s Scrapbook and Compatibility Report, which were housed separately in PowerPoint 2004’s Toolbox.

But Microsoft’s attempt to pack so many different commands into a relatively compact window results in an ever-changing interface, and the dynamic resizing that occurs as you switch between tabs is sometimes jarring. In addition, many Toolbox buttons—picture formatting and animation effects, for example—open separate dialog boxes with their own varied interfaces and quirks. In comparison, Keynote’s Inspector windows encompass a narrower range of functions but have a more consistent user interface, so they’re easier to deal with. And, in contrast with the Toolbox, you can open multiple instances of Keynote’s Inspector to work with different object attributes at the same time.

The Keynote look

It’s always been easy to spot Keynote slideshows—even if they don’t use Apple themes, presentations crafted with Keynote often have a distinctive look. PowerPoint 2008 narrows the gap by adopting more of the graphics capabilities built into OS X. In addition to adjustable soft drop shadows and object transparency, first introduced in Office 2004, PowerPoint 2008 supports reflections. Unlike Keynote’s reflection feature, which only works with images, PowerPoint lets you reflect any picture, shape, or text object onto whatever lies behind it on the slide. You can even alter the reflection’s vertical extent and adjust the separation between it and the original object.

PowerPoint also sports a greatly expanded repertoire of picture formatting options and special effects that go beyond Keynote’s image adjustments. The roster of 34 effects range from artistic (such as stained glass and bump distortion) to practical (unsharp mask and gamma correction). But, although it’s helpful to adjust images without having to launch an image editor, doing so can significantly increase the size of the presentation file, as is also true in Keynote.

Missed opportunities and glitches

Noteworthy additions in Keynote ‘08 included Smart Builds, which let you display a series of images using one of ten animation effects, and path motion, which lets you move slide objects from one point to another along defined paths. Alas, similar features are absent from PowerPoint 2008. Its lack of support for path animation is particularly disappointing, since this feature has been available in the last two versions of PowerPoint for Windows. I was especially surprised when I created a presentation that contained motion paths in PowerPoint 2007 and then tried to open it in PowerPoint 2008 on my Mac. I expected some sort of compatibility error, but the animations played perfectly, meaning that the engine for displaying path motion exists in the program.

Some PowerPoint 2008 omissions are especially odd: for example, you can interact with QuickTime VR movies in a slideshow (something that Keynote still doesn’t let you do), but you can’t pause and then scrub back and forth through a movie during a presentation the way you can with Keynote. Unfortunately, that limits PowerPoint’s suitability for some educational applications.

PowerPoint’s continued reliance on external applications (Microsoft Graph in PowerPoint 2004 and Excel in PowerPoint 2008) to create charts and graphs is also a bit of a letdown. While PowerPoint and Excel together provide a more comprehensive library of styles and options than Keynote’s integrated chart editor does, editing the source data in a separate program still feels awkward.

As if to prove that they’re not above borrowing a good idea when they see one, Microsoft’s programmers have implemented a few tricks from Keynote’s playbook. For example, in addition to fixed guides, PowerPoint now provides Dynamic Guides that pop up as you move objects around, making it easier to center them on the slide or position them in relation to neighboring items. But PowerPoint’s guides are finicky, sometimes not appearing when you expect them to or forcing you to move objects very slowly to make them come into view.

Macworld’s buying advice

Despite many improvements, PowerPoint 2008 doesn’t feel as well thought out as Keynote, a legacy of its long heritage and its close ties to other Office applications. While you can duplicate almost all of Keynote’s dazzling effects in PowerPoint, it’s still faster to whip up a top-notch slideshow in Keynote. But that doesn’t mean that Keynote is always the best choice, especially if you can’t use a Mac to deliver your presentations. In many corporate, educational, and scientific venues, presenters have no choice but to use PowerPoint. (You can create a slideshow in Keynote and export it in PowerPoint format, but many of Keynote’s best effects are lost in translation.) When you factor in the common requirement to exchange presentations with PowerPoint for Windows users, it often makes more sense to just use PowerPoint.

Whether you’re using PowerPoint by necessity or choice, the latest version’s new additions are useful, and produce attractive results. Unfortunately, Mac users still miss out on capabilities available to Windows users and the intuitive interface of Keynote.

http://www.macworld.com/article/131597/2008/01/powerpoint2008.html

User Discovers Office 2008 Problems

by Dan Frakes and Rob Griffiths

A pair of installation-related problems involving the new release of Microsoft’s Office 2008 won’t cause damage to your data or prevent the productivity suite from running. But the issues, discovered by a user, pose potential security and administrative headaches. Microsoft is vowing fixes for both.

Issue No. 1: UID 502

Office 2008’s installation problems first came to light thanks to Mac user Joel Bruner, who noted both issues in posts on his blog earlier this week. The first issue relates to file ownership, and requires some basic understanding of user accounts and installations in Mac OS X.

Every user account on your Mac has an associated user ID number (UID); Mac OS X uses these UIDs, rather than account names, to track which users have what access to various files and actions. When you initially set up your Mac, the first user account created is given UID 501 and has administrative access. The second account created gets UID 502 and whatever account status—admin, standard, or managed—the administrator gives the the account. The third user gets UID 503, and so on.

Normally, when you install software using Apple’s Installer utility, each installed file is owned by either the system, by a specific user account as determined by the developer and laid out in the installation package, or by the user account performing the installation.

However, as Bruner pointed out in one blog entry, the Office 2008 installation doesn’t do any of these things. Instead, the installation package installs almost all of its files—and their enclosing folders—with the owner set to user ID 502. This occurs regardless of which user account runs the installer, and regardless of the administrative status of UID 502.If UID 502 is an administrative account on your Mac, this may not be an issue, as you’ve presumably given that account admin status for a reason. However, if you set up the second account on your Mac without administrative privileges, that account will still end up with free rein over all of Office’s components, and thus the ability to delete or alter /Library/Fonts/Microsoft, /Library/Application Support/Microsoft, and /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008, as well as the contents of these folders. (The installation for the Special Media Edition of Office 2008 also creates the folder /Library/Automator if it didn’t already exist, and gives UID 502 ownership of that folder, as well.) For instance, the user could replace a legitimate file with something else and even make that file executable (see below).

Similarly, if you’ve set up the second account on your Mac as a non-admin account for your own everyday use—ostensibly to prevent yourself from accidentally screwing things up—this “safety” account will have the power to delete or otherwise alter the Office 2008 installation.

Many users won’t notice this situation, but it potentially poses a security issue, as it could provide a non-admin user the ability to modify files that would normally be accessible only to administrators.

Note that UID 502 will be set as the owner of Office 2008 files even if you’ve never created a second user account on your Mac—meaning your Office files will be owned by a user that doesn’t exist. This is actually a preferable scenario, as a user that doesn’t exist can’t modify files.

Issue No. 2: Execute!

Bruner also discovered a second problem: Every file in the Office 2008 installation is executable. This means, speaking generally, that files—even things such as clip art and help files—are seen by OS X as “programs” and, if a particular file has executable code, can be run.

This problem should not affect normal use of Office 2008, but security experts generally frown upon the idea of thousands of unnecessarily-executable support files sitting on a drive. Such a situation isn’t necessarily dangerous, but it opens up avenues for possible security exploits.

For example, if a security vulnerability were to be discovered in one of the more than 42,000 files installed by Office 2008, such a vulnerability could be easier to exploit if the file is executable. The only Office 2008 files that actually need to be executable are the actual programs, as well as folders.

What you can do

Although Office 2008 is the first major Microsoft product to use Apple’s Installer system, security experts were surprised by these mistakes. “It’s not good and a clear violation of Microsoft’s standards,” said analyst Rich Mogull, who writes about security issues for Securosis and TidBITS as well as Macworld. “This should not have occurred considering how rigid [Microsoft’s] Security Development Life Cycle is. By potentially allowing a non-privileged user to change system-wide files, it could allow an attacker to cross trust boundaries and execute code in another user’s context.”

Mogull notes, however, that the security implications are, for now, theoretical rather than immediate: “The combination of the two issues is problematic, but it’s one of those issues we need to bring to light, not panic about quite yet.”

For its part, Microsoft takes the two issues seriously, says Geoff Price, product unit manager for the company’s Macintosh Business Unit.

“The Mac BU team is aware of reports regarding Office 2008 installing to a folder that potentially allows a local non-Admin user access to program files,” Price said. “This issue should only affect machines that have a second local user account enabled; other scenarios should not be affected.”

Microsoft also acknowledged the second issue. The company will be providing a free, downloadable update that fixes both issues; in addition, future pressings of the Office 2008 installation disc will include an updated installation package that installs all files with the proper attributes. (A release date for the update wasn’t available at the time of publication; we’ll update this story once we get that information.)

In the meantime, Price provided a fix for the file-ownership issue:

1. While logged in to an admin account, type the following command, as one line, and then press return: sudo chmod -R a-st "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008" "/Library/Fonts/Microsoft" "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft" "/Library/Automator" (If you don’t have the Special Media Edition of Office 2008, omit"/Library/Automator".)
2. Enter your account password when prompted.
3. Type the following command, as one line, and then press return: sudo chown -h -R root:admin "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2008" "/Library/Fonts/Microsoft" "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft" "/Library/Automator" (If you don’t have the Special Media Edition of Office 2008, omit"/Library/Automator".)
4. Enter your account password if prompted.

This procedure properly assigns ownership of all Office 2008 components to the system. Unfortunately, there’s no simple fix for the issue of all Office 2008 files being executable. Because some files do indeed need to be executable, you can’t modify all the files en masse. Users will have to wait for the update from Microsoft to address this issue.

If you’re especially concerned about security and you decide to uninstall Office 2008, note that the included Uninstall utility doesn’t fully remove all components. It apparently moves only the Microsoft Office 2008 folder (in /Applications) to the Trash, leaving /Library/Fonts/Microsoft, /Library/Application Support/Microsoft, and all of Office’s included Automator actions in place.

http://www.macworld.com/article/131822/2008/01/office2008issues.html

Presentation Sound Effects

A plethora of sound effects that can be added to presentations.

http://www.freeplaymusic.com/

Remembering The King

PowerPoint templates of the King.

http://www.elvispresleynews.com/Elvis-eBooks.html

ESL Resources

A selection of resources that would prove useful for those teaching ESL or for those students struggling with there reading comprehension. You will find downloadable lessons for ipods, PC's and  laptops.

In addition,  you will find PowerPoint lessons to assist with vocabulary as well as over 65 lessons for ESL teachers. In with printable pdf worksheets. Teachers of EFL and ESl may wish to examine these worksheets.

Also on this website you will find audio ebooks for teaching reading and writing and mp3 audio podcasts which can be employed to learn English.

You will also find quizzes which include multiple choice, gap fill, word puzzles with clues, matching quizzes and short answers which will aid students in learning English grammar and vocabulary.

http://www.download-esl.com/download.html

Accommodations For Reading

EBooks contain many features that can be classified as accommodations or as assistive technology tools.  EBooks can provide these accommodations for reading by providing alternative formats, scaffolds and supports for reading activities to reach all students, including English as a Second Language (ESL) and special needs students.   EBooks can be more accommodating than paper printed text for many readers because of features like:

	the just-in-time learning with multi-language interactive dictionaries,
	text interactions (highlighting, bookmarking, drawing, etc.),
	display options, and
	note features.

Some of the more accommodating features that some eBooks currently have include:

light weight (in handhelds in comparison to other standard texts),

	adjustable text size,
	scanning assistance,
	highlighting,
	bookmarking,
	note taking,
	interactive dictionaries, and
	text-to-speech capabilities.

Using the interactive features of modern eBooks, instructors can create pre-accommodated or strategize eBooks for student reading, including items such as:

	advance organizers,
	concept maps,
	cooperative activities, and
	reading guides.

Digital or electronic text options such as text-to-speech provide users additional modalities for receiving the information as the material on the screen is read aloud to the student.

http://www.drscavanaugh.org/ebooks/accommodations.htm

A Selection Of Ebooks

A collection of on-line, printable, PowerPoint, Intellitools Suite and Clicker books.

http://www.fsdb.k12.fl.us/rmc/content/ebooks.html

More PowerPoint Resources

Fact Flippers - done in PowerPoint are great tools  for presentation and review of facts. Click the link to find the step-by-step directions for creating Fact Flippers.

Pencil Toppers - done in PowerPoint are great rewards for students that you can customize to the occasion, unit of study, or theme. Use the PowerPoint skills you've learned in TangiTech to fill the shapes, add Word Art, graphics, textboxes, and borders to make your Pencil Topper.

PowerPoint Mini-Books - Print your PowerPoint presentation as Handouts- six slides per page. Cut the slides out leaving a 1/2" to the left of each slide to provide a space to staple. For an added touch, on Slide One leave an inch to the left and wrap that around the outside of the mini-book before stapling to form a spine for your Mini-Book.

Candy "Rappers" - are an excellent way to publish student writing. Use this PowerPoint template to write your "rap" and then wrap a fake cardboard candybar or better yet..... the real thing, YUM!!!

Bag Tags - Label the contents of your ziplock bag collections with this PowerPoint Template.

Pre-made PowerPoint presentations - these PowerPoint presentations can be downloaded to your computer and edited to fit your needs. This list is a collection from educators all over.

CyberExchange PowerPoint presentations are slide shows created by teachers just like you, who have generously put their hard work on the web to share with other teachers. The hours and hours of hard work are greatly appreciated. These zipped files can be saved to your computer and used "as is" or change them to fit the skills your students need.

Jeopardy Games created by teachers in Hardin County School District, Kentucky in PowerPoint format are available for downloading. Once again, these teachers are sharing their hard work with others... and we send our thanks their way.

"The House of ...." lesson plan (Ms Word Document) - During the Templates for Teachers workshop, we will complete this activity using PowerPoint templates and Kidspiration. Click here to download the c olored house templates. If printer ink is a problem , download the black and white house templates and have the students color their house with markers or crayons. To see a sample of this project completed, click to download.

PowerPoint Design Templates - listing of sites where you can download new Design Templates for your PowerPoint.

Free PowerPoint Design Templates - this site offers free design templates for teachers to download.

Sonya Coleman's Template Website offers 208 PowerPoint template kits that are free for your personal use.... some beautiful and different design templates to use in your PowerPoint presentations.

North East Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas  has a wealth of lesson plans with accompanying PowerPoint templates that correlate with state and national standards. Each six weeks there are ideas for Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies for grades Pre-K -Fifth Grade. Don't forget to check out theArchived page Remember... the best way to download any of the files on these pages is to right click on the link, then choose "Save Target As." Now decide where on your computer you want to save the file, and then click "Save." AFTER you have saved it to your computer, then double click to open the file. You must have the program that the file is made in to be able to open it. For example, if it is the PowerPoint file, you must have PowerPoint on your computer. http://www.vickiblackwell.com/ppttemplates.html

Using PowerPoint To Play Educational Games

PowerPoint is a flexible tool which allows for a variety of classroom applications beyond displaying lecture content. Many creative instructors leverage PowerPoint's multimedia and hyperlinking capabilities to create games that they and their students play in class. Games motivate students, hold their attention, and introduce excitement, spontaneity, and fun into a class session. They are particularly useful for review or as a novel way to present course content.

Some PowerPoint games are variations of famous television game shows, while others are adaptations of board games, sporting events, or familiar activities. All make use of hyperlinks between slides to simulate the format and play of the game. Within the context of your class, students can play these games in teams or individually, depending on the game, your objectives, and the size of your class. There are scores of examples of PowerPoint games on the Web, most of which are freely available for download. Below we highlight examples that are appropriate for use in higher education, but be aware that these are only a handful of the many games that can be adapted for display via PowerPoint. Others can be found through simple internet searches.

Jeopardy
Who Wants to Be A Millionaire
10,000 Pyramid
20 Questions

Jeopardy

This game is a favorite among students. Most of them will be familiar with its conventions, so introducing it to your class should be relatively easy. It is also straightforward to author in PowerPoint. Jeopardy consists of a main slide with a series of hyperlinks to separate slides that contain questions.

The Jeopardy concept is nicely adaptable to educational ends–lending itself to multiple disciplines, question types, question difficulties, and objectives. Jeopardy questions most easily test knowledge and recall, but they can also be adapted to higher order skills such as application, analysis, or evaluation. In these cases, students should take time to reflect and provide short answers to the questions.

On television, Jeopardy is played by individuals who attempt to answer questions as quickly as possible. This format tends not to work well in a classroom, however. When responses are given quickly, students in the audience might not get the benefit of formulating answers for themselves. In addition, many students will be reluctant to be "put on the spot" as a lone contestant, and there is a real chance of embarrassing members of the class.

A format that many instructors find more inclusive and comfortable is to have groups of students work together as contestant teams. Rather than having groups chime in as quickly as possible, the instructor presents the "answer" and gives groups time to discuss their response (in the form of a question, of course). The instructor then calls on a group. If their answer is correct, they choose an area of the board and a new question is posed to the next group. If their answer is incorrect, the instructor poses the same question to the next group, and so on. Each group is given an equal number of opportunities to answer first, and after a predetermined number of rounds, the group with the highest number of points is the winner. Plan for some kind of reward for groups that succeed–candy or other prizes keep students motivated and help to make the game exciting.

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Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

This game is also popular among students. Like Jeopardy, it is well suited to educational ends and can accommodate a variety of questions of varying difficulty. The questions are presented to contestants in multiple choice format, so the game is appropriate for examination preparation or review.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was played by a single individual working through a series of fifteen multiple choice questions starting at $100 and roughly doubling until the final $1,000,000 question. Questions became more difficult the farther one progressed, but contestants had access to three "lifelines" to help them answer tricky questions. They could poll the audience for an answer, phone a friend for advice, or use the "50-50" option in which two incorrect answers were eliminated. Each lifeline could be used only once, and if a contestant answered incorrectly, the game was over. After each question was presented, the contestant was given the option of taking the money earned up to that point or trying his luck at answering.

For classroom purposes, it's necessary to tweak the rules of the game a bit. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is best played with teams of contestants rather than individuals for the same reason that Jeopardy is: student performance is enhanced in a group while the risk of embarrassment to individual class members is minimized. Some instructors also prefer not to give students a chance to "opt out" of a question, asking them to answer until they either run the table or answer wrong.

One feature of the game show that translates very nicely into the classroom is the use of life lines. Student groups should be allowed to poll the audience or use the "50-50" option; if you have graduate teaching assistants, you may adapt the "phone a friend" option to "ask a grad student" or you may simply eliminate this as a choice. In any case, the game is exciting, captures both the groups' and the audiences' attention, and promotes a collaborative environment in which students work together to win the big prize. Like other games, consider bringing something to reward student success.

There are a variety of ways in which PowerPoint can be used to accommodate this game. The example shows a typical layout, with a question, life lines at the bottom of the screen, and multiple choice answers each of which is hyperlinked to a correct or incorrect slide.

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$100,000 Pyramid

This game is a variation of the $100,000 Pyramid game show. It is best used as a review of declarative knowledge, and some instructors choose it as preparation for exams. It functions best in two ways: as a "take home" review where small groups of students work together, or as an in class exercise where pairs or small groups of students each have access to a computer terminal. It works less well in a lecture hall or an environment with only one computer.

The $100,000 Pyramid game show consisted of two parts: the basic round and the winners' round. To start, two contestants were each paired with a partner. Each pair chose a category which contained seven answers. One of the pair would supply verbal clues and the other would attempt to guess the answer from them. Each pair was given a limited amount of time to get as many correct answers as possible. The pair with the most correct answers after the first round was given a chance to work through a pyramid of six answers in sixty seconds for a chance to win the big prize.

Either the first round, second round, or both can be used for educational purposes. The example below shows what a typical first round PowerPoint slide might look like. Imagine students choose the topic of "literary terms." By clicking on a hyperlink, one student is shown a screen that lists seven answers such as "metaphor," "simile," "iambic pentameter," "quatrain," "sonnet," etc. This student describes items on the list by giving clues to his partner, who faces him and away from the screen. The goal is to name as many items as possible within a set amount of time. Pairs can alternate working through different topics, or groups of four can play one pair against another.

If played in groups of four, you may choose to extend the game by having the group that scores highest in the first round compete in a $100,000 round. Our second example shows what this slide might look like. Pairs try to complete an entire pyramid of new, and more challenging, answers.

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Twenty Questions

This PowerPoint game differs from our other examples in several ways. First, it is less a game that has clearly defined rules of play, and more a manner of asking questions and creating an entertaining atmosphere that gets students actively involved in thinking. It is a very easy strategy to execute–both in terms of authoring the PowerPoint slide show and implementing it in class–and it lends itself seamlessly to many question types and objectives, from asking students to recall facts, apply information, or analyze and evaluate it. Because the Twenty Questions strategy is simple, there are a myriad of ways to use it in classes both large and small. A typical application is noted below, but be creative and invent new ways for yourself.

In Twenty Questions, the instructor creates a PowerPoint slide with hyperlinks to separate slides containing questions. The instructor or a student chooses one of the hyperlinks. The class is given some quiet time to formulate a response to the question displayed, and the instructor chooses a volunteer to answer. You'll generally have enthusiastic volunteers if you give small prizes for correct answers.

You might use this strategy as part of a review session for an examination, devoting the entire class period to asking questions, or you may use it as a brief active learning strategy within the context of a lecture. In this case, you may ask two or three questions at transition points in the material to test students' comprehension and help them work with and remember the information before moving on.

Keep in mind, too, that because PowerPoint is a multimedia application, the questions you author can contain images, animations, audio, or video. These can be powerful learning tools for students in a variety of disciplines, and they work well with each of the game examples that we've showcased.

http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/powerpoint/games.html

PowerPoint-Creating Classroom Presentations

Your students have just completed some terrific reports on cold-blooded animals or Native American culture or photosynthesis. You'd love to incorporate a technology component into the activity. You've never used graphics software, though, and you certainly don't have time to learn new software now! What's a technological newbie to do? Included: Ideas for simple, teacher-created projects to build with your students!

WHY POWERPOINT?

You can use Microsoft PowerPoint to create interactive presentations containing text, art, animation, and audio and video elements. It is probably the best-known presentation graphics program available. If your computer arrived pre-loaded with Microsoft Office, you most likely have PowerPoint too. Just click Start and select Programs to find it. Not all Microsoft Office packages include PowerPoint, however. If yours doesn't, visit Microsoft to find out how you can get it and how much it will cost.

PowerPoint's widespread availability isn't the only reason for its popularity, however. "I use it because I like technology and the choices it allows," LuAnn Kaiser, a teacher at Nebraska's Wausa Public School, told Education World. "With PowerPoint, you can animate words and graphics, add sound effects, include a QuickTime movie -- it's just awesome! PowerPoint captures the students' attention and helps keep them interested!"

"The kids like it," Kaiser added, "because it's so easy to use and because the ability to integrate graphics and text means there's always something new to learn and do."

TERRIFIC STUDENT PROJECTS!

Kaiser generously agreed to share some of her favorite PowerPoint projects with Education World users.

"One of my students' favorite projects is Today in History," she said. "Students research an event that happened on [a particular] day in history and then create a ten- to 15-slide presentation about it. They find graphics online or create their own. Most students incorporate sound effects in their presentations as well. One of the best ones was about the St. Valentine's Day massacre with Al Capone. The kids loved it!"

"We also use PowerPoint during creative writing classes," Kaiser noted. "For example, in the Visual Poetry activity, students read a favorite poem and create a PowerPoint presentation depicting a visual interpretation of the images in the poem.

In addition, students are currently writing and illustrating children's stories."

"In tech prep," Kaiser explained, "students create resume-style presentations that have even included pictures of them working at their job sites. In speech class, they create slide shows to accompany their oral presentations."

IT'S NOT JUST FOR KIDS

PowerPoint works well in the classroom in a number of ways.

• Present information or instruction to an entire class.
• Create graphically enhanced information and instructions for the learning centers.
• Create tutorials, reviews, or quizzes for individual students.
• Display student work and curriculum materials or accompany teacher presentations at parent open houses or technology fairs. You can set PowerPoint presentations to run automatically during such events, providing a slide show of classroom activities and events as parents tour your classroom or school.

RANTS AND RAVES

Although most of the applications we will cover in this series will be as new to me as they are to you, I did have some minimal (although not recent) experience with PowerPoint. Because I rarely find, however, that using software applications is as "unforgettable" as riding a bike, I was surprised at how quickly I learned enough to create a reasonably attractive, interactive presentation.

PowerPoint was both easy to learn (or relearn) and to use. The toolbar tools are easily accessible, clearly labeled, and relatively foolproof. Some of the shortcut icons seemed less intuitive than others -- I never would have "guessed," for example, that the star icon indicated the animation tool. The rollover labels for the icons cleared up any momentary confusion, though. Most important, no action is "undoable," so you can correct your mistakes easily -- even if you save them. (Do remember to save often!) In other words, you won't spend several hours creating the perfect presentation only to find you can't correct a typo, insert an additional slide, or add an animation.

USE THE TUTORIAL

As I explored the PowerPoint software, I used it to create a brief tutorial introducing new users to the basic functions of the program.

Follow the directions below to view the presentation. 

• To view it online click here
  
  Note: If you are viewing with any version of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, you might find that:
  
  
  • Animations, including slide transitions, are not supported (except animated GIF pictures).
    
  • The presentation cannot be viewed full screen.
    
  • You cannot open or close frames.
    
  • The active slide title is not highlighted in the outline pane.
    
  • The mouse does not highlight elements in the outline pane.
    
  • Sounds and movies do not play.
    
    

• If you don't have PowerPoint on your computer, search for the aproriate PowerPoint Viewer on the Microsoft Download page.

• Download the PowerPoint Tutorial.

• Click Slide Show, choose View Show, and view the tutorial.

• Print the slides and use them as a guide as you create your own PowerPoint presentation.

Remember that this is an introductory tutorial; PowerPoint offers many features and options beyond those covered here. Once you're familiar with the program, you'll be able to

• Choose from a variety of presentation types, designs, and layouts;
• Create original designs and layouts as well as change colors and color schemes in pre-selected designs;
• Add, delete, and rearrange slides within a presentation;
• Insert Web art, scanned images, or create your own drawings;
• Create charts and graphs;
• Incorporate sound and videos;
• Add hyperlinks;
• Save work in html.

HELP YOUR STUDENTS CREATE PROJECTS

When you've finished your own presentation, you'll probably be ready to help your students create theirs. Encourage them to start with short presentations that contain only a few slides. Remind them to keep the text and graphic images simple. A plan never hurts either.

Project-Based Learning With Multimedia  provides a workable outline for planning and completing multimedia projects. Advise students to follow the guidelines below.

• Plan the projects. Identify goals and content; determine overall project length and progress checkpoints; determine project activities.
• Prepare the information. Complete research and/or activity components.
• Plan presentations. Create storyboards, which are detailed plans of the text, graphics, and order of each slide.
• Create presentations.
• Present completed projects, review experiences, and discuss project highlights or trouble spots.

For an evaluation tool to use for evaluating the writing content, technical content, technical organization, and communication skills used in student-created PowerPoint projects, try http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/pptrubric.html orhttp://www.artteacherconnection.com/pages/powerpointrubric.htm.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• PowerPoint Informational Slide Show 
  This slide show provides an overview of PowerPoint and describes its tools and capabilities.
• PowerPoint Tutorial 
  Mark L. Merickel of Oregon State University provides this terrific PowerPoint tutorial, which includes lots of graphics.
• PowerPoint In The Classroom 
  This engaging tutorial provides easy-to-read, graphically clear information about PowerPoint functions.

Article by Linda Starr 
Education World® 
Copyright © 2000 Education World

Originally posted 03/20/2000
Last updated 01/31/2007