PowerPoint to SWF with OpenOffice.org

Let's admit it, PowerPoint has taken over the teaching profession. Many of us live by the PowerPoints we create one year then modify for the next year and so on. I'll admit I still dig up PowerPoints I created years ago and redo them for my current classes. My recent push in the past few years has been to move towards a digital classroom. 

I use Moodle in my classroom as a portal for my students to view and turn in all of my assignments. Because of this web based format (and my classroom web page) I've discovered that PowerPoint  has its limitations. I've recently begun using OpenOffice.org to convert my PowerPoints to ShockWave Flash.

So, how do you do this? Well.. I've created a PowerPoint to demo how to do this. See this sample. Of course, you can also just look at the SWF movie below.  :-)

* Oh, another cool thing I found while working on this entry. Embedding media in html documents can be a real pain!! The Embedded Media HTML Generator from UCSF's cit makes this really easy!
When I moved this post, I lost some GREAT comments too:

from pauline
"Nice post. Thank you. To publish my PowerPoint presentations to Moodle I use iSpring Ultra. (http://www.ispringsolutions.com) Try it, it's very easy with that tool."

from anonymous
"Try Powerflashpoint(http://www.digitalofficepro.com) , It perform well in the ppt to flash conversion and retains all special effects."

The Biotech Game of Life

Biotechnology has become a big topic in NC. When they opened KHS a couple of years ago, biotechnology was one of the original topics that the school is supposed to focus on. We've even started a bioscience academy.

Part of the NC Fundamentals of Technology curriculum discusses Biotechnology, so, after a bit of digging and a lot of slave, er, student labor. {Special thanks to the student media assistants and my own classes for preparing the gameboards and paper money that I needed to do this.} I used the Biotech Game of Life from The Science Creative Quarterly to discuss and enhance my student's knowledge of what biotech is.

I have to say it's a pretty cool game. It's based rather loosely on The Game of Life and you begin by picking an biotech idea (there are some great ones here) and getting seed money to develop that idea into a marketable product. While playing you discover the many pitfalls a biotech companty falls into and just how expensive it can be. I played this game with my fourth block Fundamentals class, and once they got into it, they kind of enjoyed it. I can say they got a bit frustrated at times. Each group had at least one member who landed on the next to the last square of the game board only to be told to return to the start because their Marketing fails.

The game board, money, and rules are all available at The Science Creative Quarterly. I used my school's Poster Printer to print out the game board (I also had this laminated), my school's student media assistants to cut out and sort the game money, and Starburst fruit chews as the game pieces (a little bit of bribery, never hurts). Give it a try, I've given my games to my school's bioscience academy and it will exist forever, probably.

Free Web Host with PHP and MySQL

A lot of my students are interested in web development. Many of them are working on gaming clan sites, personal blogs, etc. I've come to the opinion that building a site out of pure html is almost a moot point anymore.

Most of my students ask about providing forums, member profiles, file uploads, etc. All of these can be done with html, I'm sure, but, the learning curve is steep. I'm all about making things easier while still learning the basics of how to be a website admin. So, my advice would be to use some type of content management system (CMS).

My current favorite is e107 but there are literally hundreds of CMS's out there. Some free, some not. Since I'm a proponent of Free and Open Source Software, I encourage my students to begin at OpenSourceCMS and find one they might want to try out. A listing of a good majority of the available CMS's is available at The CMS Matrix.

Once they are ready to begin, students need a host (free) that provides at least PHP support and usually MySQL as well. One of my students stumbled on AWARDSPACE.COM, I decided to give it a try. I have to say I'm impressed. 200 MB, 5 GB of data transfer, 5 free subdomains. You can see my results at http://gdunc.awardspace.com. Want to try out a classroom blog or a student upload site? Give 'em a try.

How to create an (interactive) crossword puzzle

One of the common things that ALL teachers do is teach vocabulary. Whether teaching math, dance, or technology all of us have some new terms that we want students to remember. Crosswords are a fun, easy way to handle this...

I think the first crossword puzzle I created for my class was done at DiscoverySchool's Puzzlemaker. A good tool, yes, but extremely awkward and very unreliable. DiscoverySchool has changed little since I first used it years ago, but, I recall how much "fun" it was to create the crossword in it's user interface, then paste the image it produced into MS Word along with the clues.  If you're happy with DiscoverySchool hopefully, I may be able to show you a couple of programs that may work even better for you. If not, well at least you'll see a couple of alternatives.

I'm an online instructor, I'll admit to it freely. Whereas I see all of my students on a daily basis, I still prefer a paperless classroom. I'd much rather have students complete assignments in a digital format submit them to me through a learning management system (like Moodle). However, I understand not everyone has these resources available to them or are comfortable in an online world. So, I'll show two products that you can use to create online crosswords OR paper crosswords. I've done a quick crossword to help others compare features and flavors.

The first tool that I use is Eclipse Crossword. I describe Eclipse as a crossword creator that does very good printed crosswords (Sample) and pretty good interactive online crosswords (Sample). Eclipse also allows you to export it's output as RTF, WMF, EPS, and Across Lite TEXT Formats. This is probably the best product for just about everyone who needs it.  It's free and works very well. I find it's a lot easier and prettier to use than DiscoverySchool. Oh, a quick "hack" for those that may need it. Eclipse uses a saved file for its crosswords with a ".ewl" extension. If you need to add words to this file or need to make a quick change, you don't have to worry about redoing the crossword. Just open the .ewl file in a text editor. Notepad will work fine, but, I prefer Notepad2 <GRIN>. Simply add any new terms in CAPS then add a colon and two spaces before the definition. So... TERM:  This is the definition of the term.

I use Eclipse when I need a printed crossword, but, for creating online crosswords there is none better (IMHO) than Hot Potatoes. (Sample) Not only does this program create interactive crosswords, but it also includes components for Matching, Cloze (fill-in-the-blanks), Jumbled Sentences, and even Quiz Activities. This particular program produces very dissapointing printed versions (Sample) but is completely configurable for online use. The REALLY cool thing about this is that it completely integrates inside of Moodle (See an example here). This means that students complete the crossword (or other activity) and Moodle takes the grade that students receive and automatically adds it to the student's gradebook. Too cool, and way easy for us lazy computer teachers... :-)

Oh, and a special "hack" I discovered for HotPot. One of the most tedious parts of using Hot Potatoes is that you create the word list first, then manually copy and paste the definitions. What I recently discovered is that you don't have to do this in two parts. All you really have to do is to create your word list in the form "TERM::Definition of term" and paste the word list (with definitions) into the automated grid generator. One step and done... how cool is that??

Now I'm sure there are dozens of other crossword creators out there, many are free and some may be better than the ones I mention here, but, hey, it's what I use. Hope it helps!!