"Insert Photo Album"

In any given PowerPoint that I put together, just about every slide has a picture in it - sometimes two or three. (I put together a Food of the Month presentation last year with a slide that had twenty! What was I thinking?) One of PowerPoint's biggest strengths is that it lets you use strong visuals to get your points across.

This is how I used to put pictures into a PowerPoint presentation:

I'd go looking for a picture online, then when I found it, I'd copy it, then paste it into my slide. I learned the hard way to use the biggest pictures possible - it turns out that if you shrink a big picture, it looks fine, but if you try to expand a small image, it gets all pixelated and shmutzy. So, I'd paste in this big picture and it would actually be too big for the slide, so I'd have to drag it around until I could click on the corner and shrink it, then drag it around and click and shrink and drag and click and shrink, until it was finally the right size, then fool around with it until it was positioned correctly.

Then I discovered that all my PowerPoint files were insanely large.

After some experimentation, I discovered that if I saved the pictures I found online to a folder and used the "Insert Image" command in PowerPoint, my slideshows were a much more managable size, but I still had to do the drag/click/shrink thing over and over on each slide.

There had to be an easier way.

It turns out that yes... um... actually there is.

If you have all the pictures you want to use in a folder somewhere, all you need to do is open PowerPoint, choose the command "Insert" and "Photo Album". PowerPoint will ask if you want to make a new slideshow. You will say, thank-you-very-much-yes-I-would-if-you're-sure-it's-not-too-much-trouble (or something to that effect). You tell it which folder you want to take the pictures from and, BAM! There you go. You've got a brand new slideshow.

The whole thing takes less than a minute. I'd really like to come up with some clever story here that would make this seem like a bigger deal, but it really is that moronically simple. (That's why it only took me five years to figure it out.)

Try it. It's really fun.

 
 

Toy #1

A Remote Control For Your Computer

Okay - the question is a natural one: Why?

"Isn't all this technology distancing me enough from the rest of my life already? Why would I want to get even MORE remote?"

I can answer that with two words: "Teenaged Boys".

If you've been in the classroom for any length of time, you know that it is a very bad idea to turn your back on certain students. If you have any "difficult" boys in your class (and really, isn't "difficult" the most flattering way of describing some of your boys?), you know that the idea of sitting at a computer in a dark room with your back to the students is basically courting catastrophy.

Yes, of course there are ways to contain the damage. You can pause the slideshow or movie that you are showing periodically to ask pointed questions of particular students to make sure that they are paying attention. You can spin around and give the Evil Glare of Doom to somebody each time you hear a suspicious noise. You could make one of the worst offenders your special AudioVisual Assistant.

Ultimately though, you still end up in a darkened room chained to a computer with your back turned to most of your students.

Now, imagine a remote control that allows you to walk around BEHIND your students as they watch your brilliantly dorky PowerPoint presentation. You've heard a distressing amount of whispering and giggling from one corner of the room as you've been showing pictures of Lake Titicaca or lecturing on Manhattan Schist. (Or maybe that only happens to me...) You can walk around and stand next to the Giggle Brothers and maybe even lean on the desk between them as you make your next point and effortlessly move on to the next slide.

Remote controls for your computer are reasonably inexpensive - usually under $100. (I got the one I use everyday for about $40 at Radio Shack.) They can range from the really simple to the extremely complex, from unbelievably easy to use to very, very difficult.

I've only tried a few different models - mostly because I really like my original one - a Keyspan PR-US2 Presentation Remote. I really like its simplicity; it has an almost zen-like lack of cool features. It has a left-click button (which corresponds to the left button on your mouse), a right-click button (which opens up all the magic possibilities of right-clicking), a small pad that moves a pointer, much like a mouse, and a laser-pointer.

I like it - aside from the laser-pointer, it doesn't do anything a mouse doesn't do, but it is basically idiot-proof, which is pretty much what I want it to be proof against. The downside of this particular model is that the mousepad is twitchy and takes some getting used to.

Okay, a LOT of getting used to.

The weird thing is, having put in the effort of learning how to use my twitchy little blue button (Okay - that sounds a little dirty, but it is better than the word "knob", which is the only other one that springs to mind.) I really don't feel as comfortable using the other, theoretically more user friendly models I've tried.

There are rumors though, of a new remote that is sleek, exotic, sexy and sophisticated - in other words, everything I'm not and would like to be. There have been press releases. There have been reports on technology podcasts. I covet this remote. Tragically, it doesn't seem to exist yet.

 
 

Geek Alert! - Warning: This post is pretty tech-geeky (unless you actually know something about computers, in which case, you'll wonder why I'm making such a big deal out of something so simple...)

I teach a Computer Applications class to 7th and 8th graders as an IA. It is a half-year class. For the first marking period of the class, the students do a lot of exploration and learn a bit about doing internet searches, editing photos and sounds, using PowerPoint, word-processing and other basic computer applications. For the second half of the course, I have each student choose a topic, then build a project that includes aspects of everything he or she has learned over the course so far. This generally means a PowerPoint that showcases other types of work.

One of my 8th graders is fascinated by a one-celled organism called euglena. This particular student is extremely tech-savvy and enthusiastic. (He knows much more than I do about many computer applications.) While searching online, he found a website with a short movie featuring these one-celled organisms. He really wanted to include this movie in his PowerPoint. (I don't have a problem with that, as long as he cites his source - he's not going to try to make money with this or anything.)

Unfortunately, this was easier said than done:

The website simply has a window that shows the movie. When you go there, a box appears in the middle of the screen and a moment later, there is a short movie running there. There aren't any options for downloading the video.

I addressed this in a typically over-elaborate and complicated way. There is a command called "View Source" that allows you to read the computer code that a webpage is written in. (See the picture on the right.) By reading the code, this student and I found out the actual filename of the video, then used Zamzar to convert and download it. (See previous post for information on Zamzar.)

It was only later, that I realized there was a simpler way of doing this.

I could have just right-clicked.

On the any pc-type computer mouse, there are usually two buttons. the "left-click" button that you almost always use with your index finger and the mysterious, almost threatening button on the right that most computer users never use and try to avoid because it confuses them.

The right click is your secret best friend.

Clicking anything with that right-hand button will open up a window of options in any given situation that you never dreamed about.

Including, in this case, the option to just download the darn video without having to search through all that code.

(As it turns out, though, this particular movie is a Quicktime movie - meaning that it is Apple-based. PowerPoint is PC-based and the two don't get along. I would have still needed to use Zamzar to convert the Quicktime movie (.mov) to a format more suitable for PowerPoint (.mpg). Did I just make your eyes glaze over? I'm really, really sorry. I'll try not to do that again.)

Once I had actually downloaded the euglena video though, there was a second problem - it was an insanely large file. Yes, the video was "short" compared to Citizen Kane or something, but it was over nine minutes long and really, really huge - 26 megabites: way too big to fit easily into a PowerPoint presentation.

There had to be another way of finding euglena video footage that was a little more user friendly.

As it turns out, there was. Is. Er... whatever...

On a whim, I looked up the word "Euglena" on YouTube. "What are the odds," I asked myself, "that anyone would be geeky enough to actually post footage of a single-celled animal-like alga on YouTube?"*

As it turns out, quite a few. My student and I are somewhat spoiled for choice vis-avis euglenic video footage.

So I guess the main lesson to be learned from all this is, K.I.S.S. - "Keep It Simple, Student". Or Teacher. Er...whatever...

* When I asked my wife this question, she pointed out, "You would."

Sadly, she's right.

 
 

I use PowerPoint a lot in my classroom to teach mapping skills. One very useful PowerPoint tool that helps me do this is its ability to animate shapes and lines. I can make a line, like a river or a border draw itself on the screen. I can make it repeat itself over and over in a loop so that students can draw along with it. This is also useful for having arrows draw themselves to point out a particular feature on a slide.

How to do it:

Somewhere on your PowerPoint toolbar or menu, you will find a box of shapes that you can insert into your slide. It should look something like this. (Each version of PowerPoint has it stored somewhere different, so it will be easier for you to find if I DON'T give you directions on where to find it.)

If you are tracing a squiggly line, like a river on a map, choose the squiggle tool. If you are drawing a straight line or an arrow, choose one of those tools.

Squiggly lines can be hard to trace. To make things easy for yourself, enlarge the view of your slide - maybe to something outragious, like 300% or 400% - that will make it easier for you to match the curves of the line.

Once you've drawn your line, it will show itself with a box around it like this to let you know that you can edit it. If you look closely, you'll notice that I was a little messy when I was tracing the Connecticut River. There is a way to fix that without redrawing the line.

If you double-click or right-click on the box outlining the line you just drew, you can edit it. Pick a color that will make it stand out, then pick Weight, which allows you to make a thicker line. If you went outside the line with your tracing, making it thicker will probably fix the problem.

I don't have a picture to illustrate the next step, but it is very, VERY easy!

1.  Go to the toolbar at the top of the page and choose Animation.

2.  Then choose Custom Animation.

3.  Click on Entrance.

4.  Choose Wipe.

Congratulations, you've just added a line that will draw itself in your slideshow! Now all you have to do is fool around with the details.

The Details:

You have to decide how fast you want your line to draw itself and from what direction it will draw itself. You will also need to decide if you want it to happen automatically or when you click your mouse. You can do all this at the top of the Custom Animation menu.

If you want the line  to draw itself over and over:

On the right-hand side of box where your new line is listed in Custom Animation, there is a menu arrow. Click on that, then choose, Timing.

Use this menu to determine how many times you want the line-drawing process to repeat itself. The choices are pretty self-explanatory.

You're done! Congratulations! Look at you - all design-y and stuff!

 
 

PowerPoint is one of the most useful tools in my bag of tricks. It allows me to show students graphic examples of whatever abstract concept I'm trying to teach them. It allows me to use pictures, sounds, music - even videos and games to get points across the dreaded adolescent apathy barrier.

One of the biggest frustrations in putting together a good slide show presentation is citing my sources. It's not that I'm in any way reluctant to show anybody where I found stuff - it's just that after I've put in a lot of work to make a slide look really schnazzy, I hate to clutter it up with bibliography information.

That's where the the notes section of a PowerPoint slide comes in.

When you are building a slide in PowerPoint, at the bottom of the page, under the actual slide, there is a window labeled "Click to add notes". This was originally designed for nervous speakers who were likely to forget what they were showing to their audience. The idea was that they would print out a hard copy of their presentation beforehand and be able to read from their notes as they proceded.

This is where I've been citing my sources. There is plenty of room to put a formal or informal citation. If anyone asks "Where did you get your information?", you can show them your source on the spot.

[Legal disclaimer: It goes without saying that I'm not a copyright lawyer - or indeed, an expert in anything - so I don't absolutely, completely, swear in court, know for a fact that this constitutes legal attribution, but I'm pretty sure that this falls into the catagory of "Good Enough For Teachers"]

All I know is that since I started doing this, I've gotten much more concientious about copywrite stuff (a technical legal term) and I feel more like I'm modeling ethical use to my students.