Jerry Weissman, in his book Presenting To Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, shares seven ways to capture the attention of your audience. While not specifically mentioning using PowerPoint, many of his suggestions can be incorporating into the opening slide of a PowerPoint presentation. The author identifies these ideas for engaging your audience (in our case, students): 

The Question
A well-written and relevant question involves the audience, and gets the audience thinking about how the topic applies to them. Because you are using the question to engage students, think primarily of open-ended questions that are not easily answered with yes or no, true or false. 

The Factoid
A simple, impressive statistic or factual statement that most in the audience would not yet know. The more unusual, striking and surprising, the more effective it will be. And it can be more than just words. Consider using a picture, or graph to illustrate the fact. 
 
Retrospective/Prospective
Think of this approach as “that was then, this is now”. One example would be sharing how something used to be done, the way it is currently done, and perhaps how it may be done in the future. This empowers you to move someone from one point to another.
 
Anecdote
A very short story coming from the human interest angle. The bottom line is, people like stories about other people. Obviously, you don’t want to print the story word-for-word on a PowerPoint screen, but you could include pictures and key quotes. A digital story may be an effective way to telling an anecdote. 
 
Quotation
If you can find a source that is recognized as authoritative to students, a quote can leave a lasting impression. Keep in mind that the goal of the quote is to bring credibility to what you are presenting.
 
Aphorism
A familiar saying – also known as a aphorism, can capture attention because people can relate to it. Putting a twist on a familiar saying can capture attention. Consider these ideas: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” (working together to accomplish goal); “Seeing is believing.” (pictures telling a story); or “Easier said than done.” (explaining a difficult concept).Analogy
An analogy is a comparison between two seemingly unrelated items. A well-designed analogy is a fantastic way of explaining anything that may be confusing or unclear.Just keep in mind that the purpose of the first slide is to draw your students into the topic! The opening slide is designed to be a means to the end. Use it to engage your students.

That’s right – free music especially geared for elementary students! Free Kids Music provides downloads of various types of music (vocal and instrumental) that can be used in your classroom. As defined on the web site, Free Kids Music is ”intended to be downloaded and listened to on computers, MP3 players, custom CDs for personal listening, etc. It is NOT intended to be played on your web site, mixed with video or graphics and posted on another web site, played in public as warmup music for a paying audience, burned to CDs intended for resale, used on TV shows, etc.” In other words, you are encouraged to use this resource in your classroom. Check it out!

Photo Credit: , AODDJ. schoolpic.jpg. 1998. Pics4Learning. 10 Sep 2008 <http://pics.tech4learning.com>

Instead of creating a traditional “book report”, encourage students to create a “book trailer” using the free Photo Story application. Photo Story 3 is a free download from Microsoft that (1) enables you to create short ‘movies’  (animation added to photographs), and (2) add .mp3 files or use a built-in music generator to add music in the background. This article, “Making Book Trailers” with Photo Story 3” written by Mark Geary provides an overview and step-by-step instructions on how to create the book trailer. While the article focuses on students creating the final product, you can also use it to create a short introductions to new units of study.  

I own more digital cameras than I care to admit and, since I’m a camera addict, I get asked by people all of the time which camera they should buy. My answer is always the same, “It depends…”

It really does depend on several factors. One of the first considerations is your budget. After that, there are several things you should ask yourself.

• How are you going to use the camera?
• Is size/weight/portability an issue?
• Do you want a point and shoot camera?
• Will you be taking action shots? kids/sports/animals?
• Do you want to take close-up photos?
• Will you be traveling outside the US taking pictures?

There are several web sites that can help you determine which camera might be a good one for you. One of my all-time favorites is Digital Photography Review. This site can help you compare cameras and look at brands of cameras. It also has reveiws of cameras as they appear on the market.

The REMC Association has a pdf on their web site to help you make decisions when purchasing several products, including digital cameras. Click on this link and then on Digital Cameras.

Another site to help you choose is A 9 Step Guide to Buying a Digital Camera.

Edutopia magazine, published by the George Lucas Education Foundation, publishes  several articles  about education in general as well as articles about the role of technology in education. This article, titled Voice Threads: Extending The Classroom With Multimedia Interactive Albums, gives an excellent overview. Participants in the Muskegon ISD’s Tech Integration Series have been (or will be) trained on this cool resource, but if you want to learn on your own, there are some excellent tutorials on the VoiceThreads web site. It also points out (in the third paragraph and at the end of the article) that there is now a web site where you can find VoiceThreads specific to K12 education.

Check out this podcast from Bruce Basinger that introduces the use of game shows to motivate students to learn. If you don’t have time to listen to the entire podcast, the script is provided on the page. In this podcast, he points to this web site that includes nine game templates created in PowerPoint. These include, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Twenty Questions, Guess The Covered Word (four block and vocabulary words), Hillsborough Squares (a.k.a. Hollywood Squares), Weakest Link and Concentation. What’s cool is that Basinger provides a couple of ideas that reduces the amount of time you need to create a show and involves the students. Once created, they can be used year and year with little or minor tweaking.

A few years ago, I participated in a workshop by Cliff Ping on creating effective PowerPoint presentations. It was an excellent experience with just as much focus on determining content as how to create the presentation. During this workshop, Ping shared 10 essentials you need to know about PowerPoint presentations. Here are four that you will find quite helpful:

While Editing -

• Hold down CTRL and press the ] key to increase font size and [ to decrease font size.
• Hold down CTRL and press the M key to create a new slide at the end of your presentation.

While showing the presentation -

• Hold down CTRL and press the P key to change your mouse into a pen with which you can draw on your presentation. Press ESC to go back to a mouse.
• Press the letter B if you want your screen to turn black while you are making a point and W if you want it to turn white. Press the letter again to return to your presentation.

Finally, you can use your keyboard to move forward and backward in your presentation. To move forward (or activate one of your animations), press the space bar. To move back to the previous slide, press the Backspace key.