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

Learn to use PowerPoint in ways you never thought possible. Marcovitz shows how, providing practical instruction for using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to create learning environments and educational materials that support and enhance student success. With the widespread availability of PowerPoint (every copy beginning with version 1997 comes with VBA built-in) schools have all the tools they need to create powerful and interactive multimedia resources. The true power of multimedia lies in its ability to engage students' minds. Professional multimedia tools are too difficult to learn, too expensive, or both, and although many teachers and students use HyperStudio or PowerPoint to develop multimedia projects, these projects often lack true interactivity. Using VBA with PowerPoint gives teachers and students an accessible way to easily create interactive multimedia resources and projects. After introducing the basics of educational planning, the design process, and the benefits of designing and using multimedia, this book offers the practical knowledge you need to create powerful educational resources. Learn to create projects that include:
Pictures, videos, recorded voices, and links to Web sites
Interactive menus
Quizzes and short-answer questions with automatic user-feedback
The ability to score quizzes
The ability to keep track of which presentation sections have or haven't been visited
The ability to allow the user to type and alter slides during the presentation
And much more The possibilities are endless. Anyone with basic PowerPoint skills can use this book to create powerful educational material for themselves, their colleagues, their students, or their own children.