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