Powerful PowerPoint for Educators: Using Visual Basic for Applications to Make PowerPoint Interactive

Con clu sion
In this chap ter, you have learned the power of templates. Sometimes you
want your stu dents to work on technical skills, but technology in the classroom
primarily is a tool for learning the curriculum. As a teacher, you need to balance
the use of technology with the needs of the cur riculum. If the technology de -
mands are too great, the curriculum will be lost. Tem plates are the perfect so lu-
tion for many tasks. If you want your students to use pow erful technological
features, such as the VBA features of PowerPoint, but you don’t want them to
focus on the technology, you can create a template with all the features they
need, so they can focus on the curriculum but still get the advantage of the
powerful features.
You can use templates with your students with early projects while they are
still get ting used to PowerPoint, or you can use templates for all pro jects. Tem-
plates do not need to in clude ad vanced features like VBA. Even the simplest
templates (like the An imal Pro ject in Fig ure 10.1, page 174) can be used to fo cus
your stu dents and limit the amount of technology and de sign they have to
understand.
Ex er cises to Try
Ä
Cre ate a sim ple pre sen ta tion (pos si bly some thing like the An i -
mal Pro ject shown in Fig ure 10.1). Save it as a Design Template.
Quit PowerPoint and dou ble-click on your template. Ob serve
what hap pens when you try to save the presentation that is
opened.
Ä
Pick one of the projects from earlier chap ters in this book (the
quizzes in Chapter 8 work well as tem plates) and create a tem -
plate for your students. Set it up to in clude all the VBA that is
needed, all the basic slides that are needed, and in structions for
your stu dents so they know what to do with the project. For ex-
ample, if you choose a quiz for mat, you can create the title slide,
one question slide, and the feedback slide while giving in struc-
tions for how to add new slides and tie the right and wrong an -
swers to the pro cedures that you have already in cluded.
Ex er cises to Try 183

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Ep i logue
We have con 
cluded our jour 
ney through the scripting features of
PowerPoint. But I hope this journey has been only a be ginning for you. The book 
has focused on technical features of PowerPoint, but along the way you have
learned some interesting ways to apply the technology with your stu dents be -
cause that is the most im portant thing. You might find it fun to sit around and
play with the tech nical fea tures of PowerPoint, but the bot tom line is how it will
improve your teaching and your students’ learning.
Start small. Create some simple presentations for your students. Don’t try
to con quer PowerPoint and VBA all at once. A few in teractive quizzes won’t
revolutionize your classroom, but it is a be ginning. As you con quer more and
more of the examples in this book, you might be ready to create your own exam-
ples, or you might want to find more examples. Check out the Web site that ac-
companies this book at http://www.lu.com. It contains more ex amples from the
author and the op portunity for you to post your own ex amples and find examples
that other readers have posted.
This book was written for scripters. You should be able to copy ex amples
directly from the book and make mi nor mod ifications to in sert your own con-
tent. Many of you will be satisfied to re main a scripter. Just us ing what is in the
book and on the Web site should pro vide you with a rich set of examples that you 
can apply to many sit uations. How ever, some of you will want more. You will
want to create things un like anything in this book. You will want to become pro -
grammers. While there currently are no books geared to educational uses of
PowerPoint and VBA, you might be ready for a book that focuses on VBA. Look 
in the References section for McFedries (1999) or Boctor (1999) or, better yet,
go to your lo cal book store and browse through a few books. Learning to pro -
gram is a very personal ex perience, and a book that one per son likes won’t make
any sense to an other. Find one with the right balance of ex planations and ex am-
ples and de tails that work for you.
As an ed ucator, your focus has to be on the learning of your students. The
most im portant next step is to expand how you can ap ply mul timedia in your
classroom. You can do this by creating more and more sophisticated presenta-
tions for your students or by ex panding your students’ role in mul timedia pro -
duction. Chapters 1 and 10 in troduced this topic briefly, and you can find more
information in Ivers and Barron (2002) and Agnew, Kellerman, and Meyer
(1996). If you want to make media pro duction a focal point of your classroom,
you might want to check out Counts (2004). If your fo cus is more on your own
media pro duction in a school setting or out side of the schools, you might be in -
terested in Alessi and Trollip (2001), which will take you in the di rection of
becoming a professional multimedia designer.

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Using mul timedia that you create and hav ing your students create mul time-
dia can have a pow erful impact on the curriculum, and it can help students un -
derstand me dia and gain a level of media literacy. For more in formation about
media literacy, look for the Al 
liance for a Me 
dia Literate America at
http://www.nmec.org/.
Your journey is just beginning. You have the power to im prove your stu -
dents’ learning. You have the power to use PowerPoint to engage and in teract
with your stu dents. Technology is not always easy to use, but if you have come
this far, you have mastered an other piece of pow erful technology to help your
students learn. Don’t stop here. Cre ate ex cit ing in ter ac tive pre sen ta tions. Have
your stu dents cre ate ex cit ing in ter ac tive pre sen ta tions. Share your suc cesses, get
help with your frustrations, and keep in touch at our Web site, www.lu.com.
186 Ep i logue

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Ref er ences
Agnew, P. W., Kellerman, A. S., & Meyer, J. M. (1996).