Animated Step-by-Steps®

Monday, January 30, 2017

Charting

Whenever possible I try to include an opinion chart in my Animated Step-by-Steps® allowing everyone to state their prediction or democratically decide on a shared direction. Teachers love opinion charts as they provide a functional reason for using math skills and they provide a mini lesson in the democratic process, e.g., ‘According to our chart … 6 friends want to make blue play doh, two friends want to make red and 1 friend, Trevor, voted for his favorite color, green...Which color got the most votes? That's right Jeremy, looks like we are going to make blue play doh." Charts work especially well when using an interactive whiteboard as the pen tools can be used to mark up the large chart.

The opinion chart may take the form of deciding:

what color play doh we will make;
what fruit would you add to ice cream to achieve a particular color of ice cream;
what three Fall colors does each student want for their turkey’s tail.

In Animated Step-by-Step experiments, a page previous to the table chart is designed to elicit open-ended suggestions. These open-ended suggestions are then followed by a chart that has predetermined options … but also includes an ‘other’ column for any creative idea(s) that may have been missed from the previous discussion. Here are two examples derived from the Egg-Cola Experiment and the Fire Experiment.

So if you are creating your own educational materials, consider adding charts whenever possible. It’s always helpful to ‘sneak in’ a little math!

…’til the next post … (new posts every Monday)

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Monday, January 23, 2017

Converting Files from PowerPoint Show

Animated Step-by-Steps® are routinely saved as PowerPoint Show versions. This ensures that the file will open up in presentation mode, ready to go. When an ASbyS is saved in PowerPoint Show mode, it cannot be edited.

There are, however, instances in which you may wish to convert your files to .ppt files to allow you to edit them. For example, you may wish to

1. have the symbols appear when a new page opens rather than after all the page animations are complete. This allows you to ‘read’ the page using the symbols. This may be your preference if students in your class are cognitively young and can benefit receptively from an upfront emphasis on symbols.

2. substitute photo faces of your students for the illustrated faces that appear in the original download. In order to use the change picture feature you will need to have a .ppt or .pptx file.

3. add voice output to key symbols creating an additional avenue for audience participation for a student that is cognitively young.

To covert a powerpoint show (.pps) to a editable powerpoint file (.ppt) the ‘file extension’ must be visible. When the file extension (appearing as 3 or 4 letters after the dot in a file name) is visible the coversion process is as simple as changing the letters of the file extension. So for the file Making Colorful Crayons.pps, the .pps file extension would be selected/highlighted and changed into the replacement extension .ppt.

If you don’t see the file extensions on your files, you will need to tell your operating system to show the file name extensions:

On Mac OS:

Finder Menu … Preferences … Advanced Tab … check box Show all file name extensions

On Windows 7 OS:

Start Button … Control Panel … Appearance and Personalization … Folder Options … View Tab … Uncheck the box Hide extensions for known file types … OK

Reference:

Marcovitz, D. (2012). Powerful powerpoint for educators. Using visual basic for applications to make powerPoint interactive. 2^nd ed.