As educators, we have been using PowerPoint for quite some time now. We are pretty savvy at creating presentations that connect with the learning audience. The critics are definitely not talking about us when they coined the term "PowerPointlessness". That term is reserved for those presenters that read the text from each slide and have inappropriate visuals and transitions that do nothing to enhance the message for learners.

For those of us that have unleashed the power of this "screen for learning", this visual enhancement and organizational tool is an essential tool in the teacher and presenter backpack!

But, wouldn't you just like to control that slide show from anywhere in the room? I know you can use the remote mouse or a device like my Presenter Plus USB device, but did you ever think you'd be able to control your presentation from your handheld! Forget that linear forward or back button, a product called SlideShow Commander developed out of the Carnegie Mellon Pebbles Project and now available commercially at Handango $49.95 (PalmOS) or Installigent (PocketPC)can do so much more.

While your slide show is showing on the screen, your handheld can view a Scribble Panel, Notes Panel, Titles Panel and Timer Panel. This means if you ever forget what the next slide is in your show, you can look ahead on your handheld without interrupting what the audience is seeing. And now you can do all of that without being tethered to your PC!

SlideShow Commander allows a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation to be managed from a PDA, freeing the presenters to convey their message from anywhere in the room. More than just a remote mouse, the software application enables the presenter to navigate to any slide, see their notes and slides on the handheld computer, write on the slide by writing on the handheld screen, and use a built in timer to track and record the length of the presentation -- all from the palm of their hand. Slide Show Commander also allows other attendees who using PebblesPC (See my earlier blog entry, Handheld Software for Student Collaboration) to annotate on the current slide.


Selected academic researchers, and also employees of the US government and Microsoft can get the research version of SlideShow Commander. Contact us for more information.

Mmmm......now if I could have only found it when it was still "freeware"!! You know how the teacher's budget is!

The other day I came across software that allows a handheld to remotely control a computer on a network. While the software takes a little getting used to, I am intrigued at how this application might be used in the classroom to promote student dialogue, discussions about learning, and reflective writing strategies for active learning.

Pebbles was created as a part of the Pittsburgh Pebbles PDA Project's at Carnegie Mellon University. While the current focus of the project include the use of handhelds for people with disabilities, including the new EdgeWrite input technique, and the use of handhelds as "personal universal controllers" for appliances, I always like to explore ways emerging technologies might be used in the classroom with students to foster what works in learning.

Basically, three applications that make up Pebbles, the Remote Commander, Scribble, and Shortcutter on the handheld provide all of the navigation capabilities of the computer mouse and keyboard. All you need to enter on the handheld is the IP Address of the remote computer. As I write this piece I am using Remote Commander to input my text. I can pause in my writing and use the stylus on the handheld to click on Internet Explorer in my QuickLaunch bar and navigate to my favorites to go to the Pebbles Project web page.

To browse Pebbles Internet information I switch to Shortcutter on my handheld and with previously created "panels" I can click on links, go back or forward, scroll and page up and down. All typical browsing functions that I perform with the computer mouse and keyboard are controlled with the handheld. Switching to Scribble, with the stylus I can annotate anything on the computer screen. (This works like the Pen tool in Microsoft PowerPoint slide shows) The cool thing is, though, that any handheld connected to the network through Pebbles can "scribble" on the computer screen at the same time!! Each handheld is identified with a different color line and cursor style!

One other application I especially like in an earlier version of Pebbles is PebblesChat where handhelds connected via the network to the computer could "instant message" with just the other handhelds. The developers did not bring this app into the newest version of Pebbles 6.0 but the 5.0 version is still available for download.

Now, what about those classroom uses?? With an LCD projector connected to the computer the possibilities are endless! Students can work together to co-write; teachers can get exit slips for student understanding of content instantaneously; students can explicitly mark a text source to reveal understanding; teachers can receive instantaneous feedback from students through quizzes that they created in Microsoft Word.

With more than one computer in the classroom, groups of handhelds could be connected to different computers so that students could co-author PowerPoint slides or work together in a graphic organizer from Inspiration. Each student handheld can control what happens on the screen!

While the interface feels a little clunky to start with (as with all freeware before it becomes a commercial product) with just a little investigation and training the possibilities are endless with this software in the creative teacher's classroom to get kids to talk and be more than passive learners!!

Let me hear what you are doing with Pebbles in your classroom!

View the demo for SlideShow Commander, the Pebbles Project application that went commerical. Using this you can control your PowerPoint presentations with your handheld!

It is that time of year again when everyone looks within to create personal resolutions for the New Year. After hanging around many kids during the school break and listening to views about teachers, classes and school, I am posting my best wishes for a teacher's New Year Resolutions and I pledge in my professional development sessions to help teachers keep on track for these resolutions!

New Year Resolutions
1. Create learning activities and classroom environments that make the students eager to return rather than counting the minutes or dreading the experience.

2. Develop content learning activities that are more than the kids reading the text, the teacher clarifying or lecturing, students taking notes and being assessed through periodic homework assignments, quizzes and tests.

3. Organize a professional development plan for increasing technology literacy and instructional practices with digital tools.

4. Deploy more active learning strategies in student learning activities.

5. Understand the difference between constructing new knowledge and knowledge management when designing student learning.

6. Incorporate more student learning activities that promote meaningful dialogue and student interaction in the learning process.

7. Design instruction beginning with assessment.

8. Diagnose where students are in relation to the learning standard and then create multiple and varied assessments that will provide the evidence necessary to measure student progress toward the standard. Then begin to design the learning activities which help the students meet the content or skill that will be assessed.

9. Pause during the learning process and provide opportunities for student reflection.

10. Provide access to the electronic tools that help students organize their learning.

11. Before using technology for learning, determine the value the digital tool will add to the learning experience. Make it worth it!

12. Find that instant messaging tools are powerful in learning!

13. That every teacher creates an instructional environment with a primary focus on teaching students not content.

Back from an extended holiday with the family. I really felt out of sync without my instantaneous access to world events via the Internet. My first keystrokes were a simple Google Search for tsunami +blog. Reading the numerous blogs regarding the devastating tsumani is very humbling for the human spirit.

It is hard to imagine not having access to this type of living history. For those of us who used to talk about the textbook cycle and how long it took current events in history to be published in our textbooks, this use of technology is just mind boggling! I remember the awe on the faces of my school board members when I held the CD from Time Magazine of the First Gulf War in my hand just a few short weeks after the conflict. When I showed them the text, photographs and videos, I could tell that the technology had parted the learning waters and they began to understand the impact that technology would have on learning and access to information.

It is just truly amazing how my fellow human beings, while not having been directly affected by the tsunami, and not physically able to lend a hand, can spend countless hours searching electronically, reading numerous blogs, disaster and relief postings to help relatives and friends connect information about their loved ones. I, myself, researched for hours, the names of victims and survivors, while pouring over photographs and blogs to try and find some link for those desparately trying to bring closure to this great human disaster.

Upon this new year, as students begin to return to their classrooms, I know many great teachers will be using technology in many creative ways to help our youth grasp the myriad of learning connections posed by this incomprehensible world disaster. Students will study this tragedy from the science and social science perspectives, through compassion and understanding of world struggles, in eyewitness accounts and multiple points of view to make their own personal connections. Technology will help our future global citizens express themselves electronically in multiple publishing media that then will help me grow in my understanding and personal connection to something that happened an ocean and continent away.

Thank you teachers for designing these student learning activities where technology becomes the seamless vehicle for all that is to flow...