Language World 2007

   

As a self-confessed PowerPoint fanatic, I was delighted to have another opportunity to speak about the potential of triggers and drag and drop for making presentations far more interactive. This was to be the third outing of Death by PowerPoint? Keep you finger on the trigger for this academic year having previously appeared in the programme at the SSAT Annual Conference and The Language Show. This time, the venue was Language World organised by The Association for Language Learning which took place in Oxford this year.

Although a little tired, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and as you can see from the slideshow above, took many pictures! The highlight for me, apart from the gala dinner of course, was attending the outstanding presentation eCreativity in Language Learning given by Lesley Haggar-Vaughan, Julie Adoch and her pupils at Heathfield Foundation Technology College about using digital video and iPods in the classroom. See Jen Sutton's glowing report here for more details. I'm sure we'd love to see either Lesley or Julie in a future Flashmeeting on new technologies in the languages classroom. Thanks for sharing.

I was pleased with the turnout for my session and Lisa Stevens, Spanish teacher from Whitehouse Common Primary School who I'd previously bumped into at The Education Show at Alan Green's session wrote this about my session. Thanks Lisa!

I'd also like to thank Helen Myers, president elect of ALL who seemed to like my suggestion of having a show and tell session like the TeachMeet at SETT 2006. What does everyone else think?

Have a listen to the audio of Death by PowerPoint? Keep you finger on the trigger and get in touch if you get stuck.

Download Death_by_powerpoint.ppt

Download Language_World_2007.mp3

Download trigger_tutorial.wmv

Download drag_and_drop_tutorial.wmv

Download stickmen_tutorial.wmv

Download powerpoint_shortcuts_and_tips.doc

Summary

• Introductions
• Explanation of term Death by PowerPoint
• Defining triggers
• Justifying ICT use in MFL with quotations from Ofsted report and TES article Colourful Connections
• Blockbusters and Noughts and Crosses using Text Boxes as triggers
• Using triggers to provide feedback or for emphasising a grammar point
• Having a contrast of colours for text and background colour for each slide
• TWAG TWO (Today we are going to work on) for introducing the learning object with picture prompt for presentation content
• Choosing whether to show pupils the written form when introducing new vocabulary
• Creating a trigger by grouping a blank Action Button and the letter T from Word Art
• Matching colours with the free Eyedropper Tool
• Inserting a speaker Action Button to launch sound independently
• Using colour coding to indicate gender and being consistent
• Creating a hyperlink loop between single slides and the 'amalgamated slide'
• Building on traditional methodology of flashcards and OHP to enhance learning
• Navigating from slide to slide in SlideShow mode
• Making the screen go black or white to focus a class
• Copying the 'amalgamated slide' and adding different animations
• Holding down Shift key and selecting images in a given order before adding an effect and selecting on next mouse click
• The 'Random Effect' slide
• The 'Flash Once' slide
• Toggling between Backspace and Enter to replay an animation
• The 'Zoom' slide
• The 'Explosion' slide using the AutoShape Explosion
• Holding down CTRL and using the arrow keys to move shapes in small movements in edit mode
• The 'Fly In' slide by placing images on the left or right of a slide and applying the effect from the opposite direction
• Discovering how to drag and drop in PowerPoint
• Applying the macro to any object using Action Settings
• Drag and Drop examples (letter to text level, labelling, reordering, sequencing)
• Using an image as a Fill Effect
• Annotating with the Pen tool
• Filming a weather report
• Changing the fill colour of a Vector image
• Using the Duplicate Slide feature for digital storytelling with narration
• Virginia Farmery slide
• Pairwork using personalised digital images
• Ways of Adding sound in PowerPoint
• Embedding or linking sound
• Using CDex to embed mp3 files as wav

Show Notes

2005 Ofsted report for Nodehill Miiddle School

Colourful Connections

Animation Factory

Eyedropper a free tool for telling you the RGB value (Red, Green, Blue) of any pixel on your screen. Ideal for copying colours in PowerPoint and making seamless backgrounds

Going further with presentation software as a teaching tool Becta ICT in Secondary e-magazine article

Drag and Drop presentation created by Hans Werner Hofmann and Ute Simon

dead gekko more examples of the potential of the DragandDrop macro with some supporting material created by ICT teacher Steve Bath

Converting a Text Box into an image

Art Explosion 800 000 clipart

Top Tips

1. You can check which version of PowerPoint you have by clicking on the Help menu and then About Microsoft PowerPoint. Triggers work in version 2002 onwards.

You can also download the PowerPoint 2003 viewer:

http://www.microsof t.com/downloads/ details.aspx? displaylang= en&FamilyID=428D5727- 43AB-4F24- 90B7-A94784AF71A 4

and you will be able to run a presentation which contains triggers, but not be able to make them yourself if you have say PowerPoint 2000.

2. To stop a slide going on to the next slide, Click on the Slide Show menu and Slide Transition. Make sure the tick in the box next to Advance on Next Mouse Click is removed and resave your presentation. When you click now on the screen nothing should happen.

Comments

[Dave Foord]

I think what you are doing Joe is really important for the education communities, as PowerPoint used well is an excellent teaching and learning resource, and is something that most teaching staff will have access to at work and home, and can use without requiring high levels of IT skills

There are a lot of people who work in the area of e-learning and ICT in the classroom, who 'rubbish' PowerPoint and anyone who uses it - personally I think that is a negative strategy - what we should be doing is pointing staff at 'good uses' of PowerPoint - and investing in staff development and support.

[Joe Dale]

I couldn't agree more. PowerPoint can be dull, but features like triggers, drag and drop etc really transform it and make it far more interactive and engaging.

As teachers are very busy people, I think they would prefer to find out about new features of a program they already know with suitable instructions than having to learn a whole new program from scratch, if the end result is the same.

Any other PowerPoint fans out there?

[David Noble]

A superb post, Joe. I will hopefully get a chance this weekend to sit down and get a chance to work through your excellent resources. You might want to keep off Skype in case I get stuck!

[Joe Dale]

Cheers David,

Once you've finished this post there are four new ones to explore! Thanks for plugging Volker's interview on your last Booruch podcast by the way. I look forward to hearing your appraisal!

[Lisa]

Still haven't managed to trawl through all the links and read all the notes but am still SO excited by all the stuff I'm learning! Good news is, I've managed to get Powerpoint 2003 so I can now 'do' triggers! Yippeee! So I'll be passing it on as fast as I can - as long as I can get up to date Powerpoint (and the rest!) in school(s)! That's the frustration - I've got all these plans and they get thwarted by less than up to date software and temperamental hardware. I will have to persevere and sweet talk ICT bods at work!

Thanks for the mention :-)

Looking forward to more tips and inspiration!

[Joe Dale]

That's great news Lisa. Triggers have great potential. Please share the ideas you come up with for using them.