What's New in September 2006

This month, we go back to school to learn how top educators use Impatica for PowerPoint as a powerful teaching aid.

Interactive Games & Learning
A new way of looking at online games: they're more than fun!

Impatica Presentation of the Month:
Put Your Presentation in Jeopardy!

Impatica in the News...
Impatica successfully completes round of equity financing

Interactive Games: A Powerful Learning Tool
A new way of looking at online games: they're more than fun

Say "online games" and many think of an addictive vice or a time waster. But creative training professionals know that online games help students do more than just learn the material—games can make learning fun.

Online games are great for review. Your class-led PowerPoint games are wonderful for keeping class attention and inspiring excitement. Additionally, posting PowerPoint games online  lets your students enjoy reviewing your material on their own.

How to transfer your class-led games to an online environment.
Impatica for PowerPoint lets you easily transfer class-led PowerPoint games to an online environment. Since most class-led games use PowerPoint's interactive settings to replicate the game's more exciting features, let's review the action settings you will use when designing a multiple choice PowerPoint game.

Multiple Choice Q & A. In multiple choice games, students may select the wrong answer, so you will want to encourage them to keep trying until they get it right. Multiple choice game design involves developing a non-linear PowerPoint presentation with interactivity and a navigation system. Here's how to do it in 7 steps:

Note: The screen captures used to illustrate functionality in PowerPoint were taken from PowerPoint 2000.

1. Make 5 slides and 6 action buttons for each question...

a) Slide 1: the "Q" Slide. It contains a question, 4 possible answers and 4 corresponding action buttons (let's say, "A, B, C, and D".)
b) Slides 2-5: the "Answer Slides". One slide contains a correct answer with a reinforcement (e.g., Correct!) and an encouragement action button (e.g., Next question>>). The three remaining slides each have an incorrect answer plus a different encouragement action button (e.g., Try again>>).

2. On the "Q" Slide, select the action button that matches the correct answer. Next, click on Slide Show > Action Settings... and you'll see your action setting menu.

3. In the Hyperlink to... drop down box, select the slide that contains the correct answer and click OK.

4 Next, select the action button on the "Q" slide that matches an incorrect answer. In the action settings menu, select the Hyperlink to... box, and select the slide that contains the matching incorrect answer and click OK.  Repeat this process for every incorrect answer on the "Q" slide.

5. On each incorrect "A" slide, select the "Try Again" action button. In the action settings menu, select the Hyperlink to... drop down box, and select the "Q" slide.

6. On the correct "A" slide, select the "Next Question" action button. In the action settings menu, select the Hyperlink to... drop down box, and select the "Next Question" slide...(or the end slide, if you haven't created any more questions!)

7. Repeat this process, adding as many questions (and answers) as you like.

Bonus Game Design Tips & Tricks:

Add more reinforcements. Adding sound effects like applause, buzzers, bells and whistles can add excitement to your game.

You can add these in the Sound area of SlideShow>Slide Transition... In the Sound area, select the sound you would like to play during the slide's transition and click the Apply button.

Game Timing. You can also use PowerPoint's slide transition effects to keep students from pondering too long. On the question slide, select SlideShow>Slide Transition... and in the Advance area, select Automatically after. Enter an appropriate amount of time. Then, insert an additional slide after the "Q" slide that indicates that time is up.

Hint: Make sure you don't allow users to click through the slides linearly. For all slides other than your timing-out "Q" slide, select Slide Show>Slide Transition... and ensure that both advance slide options, "On mouse click" and "Automatically after" are NOT selected. Then, in Impatica for PowerPoint, ensure that you do not have playback controls selected before impaticizing. This will ensure that your users can only navigate your game with the action buttons you provided.

Get PowerPoint game shells for free. Many popular TV quiz shows like Jeopardy, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, or Weakest Link are available as free PowerPoint downloads. The interactive features, timing, animation, and sound are already built in—just waiting for you to add your own material, impaticize, and upload to your server. Try doing an internet search for "PowerPoint Games" and you will find a wealth of PowerPoint game templates upon which to build an exciting game-based curriculum. Have fun!

For a non-multiple-choice game design, click on the "Impatica Presentation of the Month" (below) to play an excellent online game developed by a very creative teacher.

Impatica Presentation of the Month
Put Your Presentation in Jeopardy!

Non-Multiple Choice. In this month's showcase example, Mary Field and Melissa Cox at Mid-South Community College in Arkansas create a winning online game based on the popular quiz show "Jeopardy!"
Play the online game now>>>

Challenge yourself! How can you use Impatica to create an interactive online game? If you have an Impatica-powered presentation you'd like to feature in future editions of this newsletter, please drop us a line, point us to your online Impatica game and provide us a copy of the PowerPoint file.

Impatica in the News.
(August 30, 2006) Impatica Inc., an Ottawa-based industry leader in the delivery and viewing of PowerPoint presentations over the Internet and wireless networks, today announced that it successfully completed an equity financing. more>>>

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