Presentation Preparation

     I am not a proponent of "edutainment," frankly I think the trends in education are away from the tried and true of the "old fuddy-duddies" of yesteryear. With that said, I believe (for practical reasons as well as pedagogical) that shortening the distance between what prep occurs and what is presented and manipulated in the classroom could be more direct as well as interactive. I use PowerPoint to present not only my lectures but many other interactive activities in class and I am always asking myself, can I prepare this before hand and will the students use it. Best of all, can I shove it all together so that I am able to manipulate the medium to be more useful.

     Something I have found that helps to "shorten" this process and integrate online access in my classroom is plugging live web pages into my PowerPoint presentations (instead of links.) Links made in a PowerPoint presentation add an extra minute or so if opening a new window and, at the least, a new window shifts attention from the pallet of the presentation or activity. There is a neat little tool that fixes this problem and allows full interactivity in PowerPoint presentations without needing to be a programming geek. (Not that there is anythign wrong with gettin' your geek on!) Head over to Office Tips to find the add in "Live Web Add-in" to make this work for you. Once you insert this functionality, you won't go back! The live presentation abilities are especially useful if you use a SmartBoard for class interaction but it isn't necessary. Best of all, it is free! Taken from Office Tips:

Use LiveWeb to insert web pages into a PowerPoint slide and refresh the pages real-time during slide show. Display web pages without ever leaving the confines of your PowerPoint slide show. No coding required. LiveWeb works with documents off your local drive too. You can specify relative paths. LiveWeb will also look for files in the presentation folder if the files have local drive information and cannot be located at the location specified by the user during slideshow. LiveWeb encapsulates the need to insert a web browser control manually and write code to update the web pages within the control during the slide show.

     Know of a good tool that helps you? Share it in the comments!