Get Inspired for Summer Learning Fun!

May is winding down, leaving just a few weeks until glorious summer vacation! This gives parents a couple weeks before school dismisses to plan learning activities to keep our kids’ minds active and skills sharp over the summer. Are you ready?

Please don’t feel overwhelmed! Just a brief activity, every day if you possibly can, will go far to keep the Boredom Monster at bay.
Our family will be staying home this year with our farm critters. And the cost of gas makes all but the shortest of day trips cost-prohibitive. How will we make the most of those lazy summer days? You are welcome to take a peek at our plans...
Every year we have an informal family “summer school.” Not only does it benefit the kids, it fills my deep teacher-longing, since I’m not in a classroom much these days. In fact—true confession—I thrive on this. It’s sick, I know, I know...
But PLEASE don’t worry if you don’t have such an inclination! If you can steal just one tiny idea from these overly-ambitious plans, you will go far in helping keep your kids’ summer interesting.
For any families considering homeschooling, summers are a great way to dip your toes in the water and see if it’s a fit.
Typically, our girls start dropping eager hints about what they’d like to study along about January. Some years they agree on one topic; other years each has launched off on her own.
Some of the topics we’ve studied in the past include:
·        Animal studies--dogs, bugs, emus and penguins

·        Weather

·        Detectives

·        Units inspired by books, like the year we learned about pirates and read an all-time favorite, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. Another summer we did a history study based on the Samantha books series from American Girl.

·        Researching the area or state where we’ll be vacationing

·        The possibilities are as endless as your creativity.
Mount Saint Helens,
May 18, 1980
USGS photo
This year, the girls were a little slow to come up with topics, so my husband suggested we study volcanoes and visit Mt. Saint Helens. What a great idea!

What will we be learning?

·        SCIENCE:  That’s a given! We can learn about plate tectonics and seismology and volcanoes and environmental recovery. I’m on the lookout for some good experiments on pressure and release, if you know of any. 

·        TECHNOLOGY:  In addition to learning how seismographs and other instruments work, the kids can develop their computer research skills. I’d love to see them sharpen their PowerPoint skills...maybe they could simulate an interactive display that you might find at the volcano’s visitor center...hmmm.

·        HISTORY:  Not only is the recent history of Mt. Saint Helens interesting (I was driving home from college the day it blew), but some of the famous blasts of the past (Vesuvius, Pompeii, Pinatubo...) are pretty mind-boggling and history-changing. What about the economic impact of the recent volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, in Iceland? 

·        READING:  This is an area where free choice reigns. What matters most to me is that my kids are reading daily.
We’ll sign up for the public library teen reading program. My older daughter has already signed up with our state Talking Book and Braille Library program; their prize for reading 1000 minutes is a blank cartridge for the new digital book players! Wahoo!
Of course, there is plenty of topical information the kids will be reading for projects, so they’ll get practice reading non-fiction. But most of all, I want them reading literature they love.
·        WRITING:  Some years this is directed; some years it is personal choice. There are a few project-related writing activities I have in mind (a brochure for Mt. Saint Helens, a script to go with that interactive PowerPoint for the visitor center), but mostly I want to give time for free writing and journaling.
 
When they were younger, we made stacks of books that the girls re-read throughout the year. What a fun way to keep the memory of summer alive during dreary winter days!
 
·        MATH:  I love summers for having time to close up those gaps in math understanding! Without naming any specific math curriculum our elementary school used, we’ll just say my kids still have gaping holes in their math concepts and skill mastery.

      It’s a great time for mom to pull out old-fashioned math instruction. Call me a fuddy-dud, but these tried and true techniques taught me math...which is more than I can say for the “experimental” system my girls grew up with. Enough said.
 
Some years, math fits well under the umbrella of our topic. Other years, not so much. I don’t worry terribly about it.
There are so many practical applications of math around home: multiplying fractions as we double a recipe, calculating seed coverage in the garden, estimating costs as we plan our trip to Mt. Saint Helens...
·        THE ARTS:  Ooooh, I’ve been waiting until my girls were old enough to tackle frame animation...a volcanic explosion would be a very exciting culminating project!  

For instant projects for younger kids, there are great collections of art and craft books at the library. I’m especially fond of the Williamson Kids Can! Book series (here’s one and another one).
My youngest is heading into a phase of life where test-taking strategies take on new importance, so that will be a subplot in our little volcano story. Much of that can dovetail with math.
This may all sound ambitious, but don’t be fooled. We only try to hit a couple subjects every day. Most days only see about 60 – 90 minutes spent on “summer school” (and some days we skip all together).  Once in awhile, the girls will get so caught up in a project that they spend most of the day on it!
A new wrinkle for me is that this is the first summer I’ll be blogging. While I know it will be hard to post regularly, I’d love to share some of the ways we adapt activities and materials to make them accessible. Maybe that will inspire similar summer learning projects for you and your darlings to enjoy.
Above all, I want families to enjoy learning this summer! It can be spontaneous and delightful. It can be delightfully planned. Whatever fits your summer style, I hope you will find lots of ways to keep your kids’ minds stimulated.
What do you do with your kids over the summer to keep their minds active? Please do share in the comments below! I can always use a good idea or three...and our other friends can too!

Easy--and Free--Playing Card Holder

Kids with fine motor issues (including very young typically-developing children) can find it difficult to play the card games they love. It’s just hard to hold those cards sometimes!

And if you have no hand use and someone else has to show you your cards without peeking, that can be a real tough order!
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Today we’re going to make a quick and easy playing card holder using free materials you already have on hand.
Success for kids with limited motor skills
This isn’t my original idea, and I sure wish I knew where I first heard it so I could give credit. It was years ago, and during that time I’ve made a passel of these card holders for my own children and students to use. It’s an idea worth sharing, and so here you go...
Whether it’s in your mail or in the computer aisle at the store, you are bombarded by computer CD disks offering free this or that, right? Don’t throw them away...save two!
free advertising CDs...you’ll need two of these

You’ll also need some Super Glue and a paper towel or waxed paper to work on. Super Glue is not nice to get on your pretty countertops. Trust me. Ooops.
I recently discovered LocTite’s Control Extra Time Super Glue and I love it! It work so much better than those little metal squeeze tubes. It’s easy to control where the glue will go. Plus the nozzle doesn’t clog. The glue itself works just like other Super Glues, but the packaging is amazing.
I’m loving LocTite’s Control Extra Time Super Glue!
Notice the friendly paper towel protecting my countertop?
Draw a ring of Super Glue on the edge of the inner hole on one disk. I like to glue the label sides together so the holder is less visually distracting.

Draw a circle of glue around the inner hole
Now lay the second disk on top of the first, offsetting them by about 1/8”. The offset is important!
See how the holes are offset a bit?

The ruler is marked in 1/8ths, so you can see how much the disks are offset.
What a world of difference an eigth of an inch makes!
By offsetting the disks, it’s easy to slip your playing cards between.
You can wedge the disks apart a bit if you need help slipping the cards between
Fan out your cards and start your game! You can set down your hand and pick it up without the cards getting mixed up...very handy for little fingers and those that need a little assistance.
Your cards are ready for whatever card game your kids are eager to play!
There...simple, free and just in time for summer card games on the lawn! Enjoy! 


Macros and Add-Ins: Advanced PowerPoint AT

Today we’re going to look at some very useful tools for turning PowerPoint into an amazing assistive technology tool:  macros and add-ins.

Macros and add-ins are programming extras that can make PowerPoint do just about anything you can dream up. They are little feats of programming magic!

I’m sorry to admit that I lack the programming savvy to create them. To write macros that work during a slide show takes knowledge about Visual Basic that I don’t have. I haven’t learned how add-ins are created.

BUT even without this knowledge, we can still bring these little gems into our own activities to make them even more accessible and interactive. You are going to love what these little gems can do!

Such as...

·        drag-and-drop objects during a show. This opens a world of possibilities with a mouse, touch screen or smart board! Now kids can place answers anywhere on the screen!

·        automatically speak text from the page

·        speak notes you have typed off the page

·        allow multiple users to interact with an activity with their mice, with each having their own cursor!

Before we look at how to add these capabilities to your own activities, we need to backtrack a wee bit and talk about the differences between macros and add-ins. These differences matter.

Macros are coded scripts that affect how a single activity will behave. These were often used in versions of PowerPoint up through 2003, although they can still be imported and saved in newer versions if saved as file extension that is macro-enabled. We’ll learn how to do that in a minute.

The benefit of this system is that the macro travels along with the activity it is attached to. This allows you to share the macro. You can share it between files on your own computer or to other computers when you generously share your activity. Sounds great, right?

Yes, but not always. A reason macros are being abandoned in favor of add-ins is that hackers discovered they are convenient packages for sharing nasty viruses. Bad, bad hackers!

Knowing this, promise me you will only download macros from sites you know well and trust. Deal? I don’t want your computer messed up!

PowerPoint 2007 and higher favors “add-ins,” which address the security issues that made macros risky. Add-ins are installed to the computer and become available to all the PowerPoint files you run. You can still install add-ins for earlier versions of PowerPoint as well.

The great part about this is that add-ins are safe and ready to use on all your activities.

The not-so-great part is that if you share with someone else an activity that relies on an add-in, they must install both your activity and the add-in. You can’t simply include it in your activity.

Does that difference make sense?

If so, let’s move on to macros.

My all-time favorite macro allows students to drag-and-drop objects. If I were to assign a more precise name to this macro, I’d call it “catch-and-release,” but then people would probably limit its use to fishing games. It behaves a bit differently than traditional drag-and-drop, in that you don’t have to hold the mouse button down or leave a trail with your finger on the touch screen. These are hard skills for some kids.

Rather, this allows you to toggle on a “capture” of an object with a click or touch. The place you touch or click next releases it at that spot by toggling the “capture” off. Students can release the mouse button while they find that spot.

I’ve used this drag-and-drop macro in a math sample  for you to download. Also, the sorting sample  can be used either with drag-and-drop ability in or self-positioning abilities (just remember to remove the Magic Invisible Boxes for drag-and-droppers).

Another great macro is SpeakNotes, which lets the student hear notes you have typed in the Notes Panel in Normal view. You can use this to provide additional information that you don’t want to show on the page. Use this to define vocabulary or give additional facts related to a photo.

The macros appear to be copying along with the sample files I shared, but sometimes download glitches happen. If you need to or prefer to download macros directly from the authors (good Web security precaution), here are the download sites for these two macros:

·        Drag and Drop macro (http://officeone.mvps.org/vba/mousemove_shape.html) 


You will receive a macro-enabled PowerPoint file from these sites, whether my download samples or the authors’ macro files. Copying the macro into your own activity is pretty simple.

First, open BOTH the file containing the macro AND your own activity. From either activity, open the Developer tab and then click Visual Basic. Along the right side of your screen, a pane will open listing all open PowerPoint files.
Open the Developer tab and click on the Visual Basic button.

This is the Visual Basic pane that opens automatically.
Notice that BOTH the original and the new activity files are open.
Be sure to open the checkbox on the left by clicking on the + sign.

Click and drag the name of the macro file to the name of the new activity (note: you may have to click the + to see the list of macros). Be sure to repeat for all the macro files; sometimes several are interacting together and you want them to function properly.
Click and drag the macro names from the original activity to the new one.
If more than one macro is listed, be sure to drag each of then.

Now both macros have been dragged to the new activity. Looks good!

Now save and close the original file.

In your new activity, you will see the macros listed when you click the Developer > Visual Basic button. It’s wise to check this before going farther.


Next, you will activate the macro action for each object you want to behave with the macro. This means only the objects you want to sort can be assigned movement, while background objects remain inactive (a very good thing, by the way!).  

Click the object you wish to use with the macro and open the action dialog box for that object (see the post about actions if you need a review). In the action dialog, check Run Macro and select the macro from the list (important note: for the Drag and Drop macro, highlight MoveShape to run the macro) and click OK. Now the action for the macro is to your object. Try it out...how cool is that!
To activate a macro, select the desired object (1). From the
Insert Tab (2), click the Action Button (3). An Action Settings
dialog box (4) will open. In this box, click Run Macro (5) and select
the macro from the list.

You can add this macro from your new activity to any other activity you create, just by opening them both, dragging the macro in Visual Basic to the new activity, and activating the macro action for specific objects. Pretty cool, huh?

It’s time to save your work. Be sure that the file extension you select is either labeled “macro-enabled” or one of the earlier 97-2003 versions.  

That wasn’t so bad, now was it?

If you want to know more about using macros in PowerPoint, check out these articles at Microsoft.

On to add-ins...

Remember, add-ins copy to your computer and are available to all the PowerPoint activities you care to use them with. However, they do not transfer with a file; they must be downloaded separately.

What kinds of add-ins might be helpful?

PowerTalk speaks aloud any text on a page. Simply click the PowerTalk icon and open a PowerPoint (2000 or higher) activity. All text displayed on the page will be read aloud by the computer (hint: you can blend text into the background color if you want narration without visible writing).
To have PowerTalk read text in your activity, select the
PowerTalk icon on your computer (1). Then open the activity
you wish to have read aloud (2).

Another fun add-in is Microsoft’s MouseMischief. This allows multiple mouse-users to interact with the screen. It is perfect for classrooms with smart boards or small groups gathered around a large screen. You can read more about it and get lesson ideas here.

More free add-ins can be downloaded at these sites:


·        http://skp.mvps.org/index.html (including a YouTube player for PPT)

·        http://billdilworth.mvps.org/Add-ins.htm (includes MoveMe add-in for drag-and-drop functionality, similar to the drag_and_drop macro)

You will be amazed at all the clever things programmers have thought to make PowerPoint do! Some of them truly do expand the abilities of PowerPoint to meet the needs students have for assistive technology support.

Have fun as you explore these!

 * * * * * * * * * *

If you missed any of our Basic or Advanced lessons on creating PowerPoint activities to support students needed assistive technology support, you can view the entire list on the PowerPoint as AT page.            

7 Ways to Deal with Daily Time Bandits

Have you ever heard the adage “We all have the same 24 hours in a day...it’s all in how you choose to use them”?


As a parent of a child with physical or cognitive disabilities, this can feel like a slap in the face. We don’t necessarily have a choice about how we are going to use our hours. We accommodate our children’s needs for physical care. We give our children the time they need to process and carry out instructions. These things cannot be hurried.

Last week a friend and I were commiserating about how time-consuming physical disabilities are. Sure, there are the big time-gobblers that come with the territory, like IEP meetings and endless doctor appointments.

But even more than that, there are day-to-day time thieves related to disabilities that steal away tremendous minutes. Every day. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year.

Moms of able-bodied children can direct their kids to complete their own care. Kids may not be  definitely are not quick when they are toddlers but there is the hope that things will speed up as the kids mature.


This isn't necessarily true for kids with disabilities who will grow to become adults with disabilities.


Let’s look at just one example. When the mom down the street needs to run errands, she can instruct her kids to grab their shoes and coats and meet her at the car.



Moms of kids with severely physically challenged children go through an entirely different process:

·        Check and replenish bag of travel supplies (5 minutes)

·        Put on AFO’s and shoes (5 – 10 minutes depending on the style)

·        Put on child’s coat (2 minutes)

·        Load child into wheelchair and walk outside (2-3 minutes)

·        Unload ramp or lift-up seat, secure child or wheelchair, reload ramp or lift-up seat (5 – 7 minutes)

·        Load wheelchair, if using lift-up seat (1-2 minutes depending on how many parts you have to remove)

·        Stop to recover breath if said wheelchair is over 30 pounds. Most standard wheelchairs are. Dust road grime from the wheelchair tires off your clothing (1 minute)

·        Go back to the house for your own coat and purse, DOUBLE-CHECK THAT YOU HAVE YOUR KEYS (2 minutes...infinitely longer if you have forgotten your keys)

Hmmm. It takes 20 – 30 minutes just to load up the car. This assumes the child doesn’t need to return inside to use the toilet. This happens.

And that’s just loading the car. What about dressing? Bathing? Toileting? Eating? Homework? The list goes on, and those extra 10-, 20-, 30-minutes add up fast.

How do we respond to this?

1. We commiserate with one another. It feels so validating to talk with other parents facing the same challenge of how to fit everything into the day. Our 24-hours are not our own. You and I are not the only people who truly don’t have discretion over how we will spend all our hours. Sometimes it’s nice to know you aren’t paddling the boat alone, isn’t it?

2. We streamline whenever possible. It’s helpful to keep a well-stocked backpack in the car with all the items you might need away from home. Our family keeps a change of clothes, an extra jacket, extra toileting supplies, spare g-tube extensions and an extra bolus syringe in the car for emergencies. To remind myself that something needs to be restocked, I toss it up on the passenger floor so I’ll see it when we’re unloading.

How else can you streamline your day? Can you organize your feeding or toileting supplies in the room to reduce backtracking and unnecessary steps? Can you purchase frequently needed supplies in bulk? Can you set out clothes and school items the night before?

3. We give ourselves extra leeway. Our families don’t operate on the usual timetable, so it does no good to try to squeeze into typical standards. While our destination may only be 10 minutes away, accept the need to start loading the car 30 minutes before we need to be there. Don’t fight it; go with the flow.

4. We are gentle on ourselves. We can’t get everything done in a day that needs to be done. But if, at the end of the day, our families tuck into bed safe, fed, clean and happy, we have accomplished something amazing. Be proud of your accomplishment. Do not allow the things left undone to steal your joy.

5. We MAKE time to do things that renew us. This does not happen automatically. No one is going to carve 15 minutes out of your day for you to do the things that refresh you. YOU must do this for yourself. You need this. Force yourself to find a way to grab a few minutes with something you love, whether it is time with a good book, time in your sewing room, time to relax with your spouse or in a bubble bath, time to train your goats...

There’s a corollary here that might help you locate a few minutes. It’s good to know everything you can about your child’s disability. Just be aware that you can lose yourself in researching the condition and its treatments (just ask how I know this to be true), especially online. It can be very helpful and quite fascinating, but hours can fly by without you realizing. Set a timer.

And when that timer goes off, take those 15 minutes of personal renewal. Please. You will feel so much better for it!

6. We learn to prioritize our commitments. We have to make what little discretionary time we have in our days count. Count Big. Count Big for the things we are personally vested in. Save the precious moments you do have left for the things that matter terribly to you.

I’ve heard moaning from several places about the noticeable lack of participation by special needs parents on school PTSA boards. Um, excuse me. Not only does our child with disabilities – and the rest of our family – require our time, but according to our life goals, the PTSA book sale may just not come up on top. Great if it does! PTSA is an excellent organization with good goals. But if it’s not a personal priority, we don’t need to feel obliged to make excuses.

We do not need to feel guilty saying “no.”

7. We learn to embrace our slow pace. I’ve told you earlier about my wise mentor, Vicki. Once when I complained to Vicki about how long it took to get through the basic routines of our day as I struggled with all my daughter’s “baggage,” she gave me a lovely piece of advice.

“Rose-Marie,” she said, “being forced to slow down is a gift. When you have to move through life slowly you will learn to see things you would have raced past before. Having to slow down allows you to savor life.”

Don’t you love her?

Several years later, Vicki’s daughter died unexpectedly. In one of our conversations when I asked how she was coping, Vicki said, “Something awful is happening. I am starting to hurry again like the rest of the world. I am forgetting how to live slowly...and it is terrible.”

There are days I struggle to remember that my slow pace of life is a gift. And Vicki is right. We may not accomplish as much in a day as our neighbors, but we have seen the small miracles.

We have given our children comfort and assurance. We have tangibly demonstrated love by our patience in accommodating their needs. Our actions show our children that they are precious to us. We have time to delight in these remarkable young people.

The hurry in life doesn’t matter; it doesn’t leave anything to show for itself but stress and gray hair and speeding tickets.

While I'm excited for what awaits on the other side, I’m in no race to get to the end of life. I might as well enjoy the scenery along the way. My child is teaching me this gift.

How about you? What advice can you share about living days where not all 24 hours are left up to your plans?

Triggers: Advanced PowerPoint AT

Photo by greg westfall at flickr.com

Remember when you were a kid, setting dominos up on end in long winding paths? When you knocked down the first domino, the others toppled over, one after another, in a seamless chain of events...

When everything worked as planned, you sucked in your breath with excitement!

Triggers in PowerPoint are much like that path of dominos. When the first event is activated, it sets off a chain of other animation events.

Just as with the dominos, you can get that same rush of wonder watching a chain of trigger events unfold in PowerPoint. It feels like magic!

This feature of PowerPoint gives you a tremendous amount of control over the events on a slide. It is available on version XP/2002 or higher.

At its very simplest, you can use a single trigger command to make one object carry out the animation you have assigned it. It’s like standing just one domino on end; when you push it, only that domino will topple.

The beauty is that the student has to click that object to start the animation.

No longer will a general mouse click begin the animation. You can’t simply shake the table to get the domino to fall; you have to flick the domino itself. In your PowerPoint activity, you must click the object itself to make it animate. We are asking the student to make specific choices here...

When would you use these simple triggers?

·        Bev Evans has an awesome attendance activity featuring triggers that you can download here. In this activity, the name of every student in class is written on a balloon. When the student clicks on their name, the balloon soars into the sky. A quick glance tells you who is present and who is either absent or tardy.



·        We’ve used triggers in the 4-choice sample  to cause the error responses, or foils, to disappear if clicked. This gives the student feedback that their choice wasn’t correct and it removes it as an option to click again.



·        You could apply simple triggers to sorting activities, where all of one kind of thing (mammals in a group of animals, objects that are red, even numbers, words that rhyme with “at,” you name it!) collect in a box. The activity would be errorless if only the correct choices travel in a motion path to the collection area. You can use the activity to assess understanding by having all prompts animated and having the student stop when they have selected all the correct objects.

Creating simple triggers is easy.

When you are assigning animations to an object in the Custom Animation pane (for a review on how to do this, look here), highlight the object’s tag. A small arrow will appear; click this to open a menu that allows you to select “timings.” In the dialog box that appears, click the “triggers” button. Select the option to “start the effect on the click of...” From the menu that appears, click the name of the object.

In the Custom Animation pane (1), highlight the tag for the object you want (2). 
 A small arrow will appear (see red arrow); click this to open a menu that
allows you to select “timings.” In the dialog box that appears, click the
“triggers” button (3). Select the option to “start the effect on the click of...” (4).
From the menu that appears, click the name of the object.

The hardest part is knowing the name of the object, since the names PowerPoint assigns are sometimes obscure. Just look back at the highlighted tag and match that name to the ones in the list.

These simple triggers are very powerful. But like the kid with dominos, once you get good at setting up one, you’ll want to expand your skill into making long chains of events.

You can click one object to make another object animate. You can even use Magic Invisible Boxes to launch a trigger sequence! You can assign the second object to trigger a third, and so on.

It’s just like that path of dominos...push one, it falls into another, which falls into the next, and so on until all the dominos along the path have fallen over.

Let’s look at ways you might use these complex triggers to create activities.

·        Maybe you have offered the student a set of choice buttons below a math problem. When he chooses the correct answer from the set, you want it to move the answer to the answer field under the problem and reward his effort by setting off a series of flashy fireworks. (see math sample or the macro-enabled version here)



·        Check out this sample activity for practicing prepositions. In it, the student clicks a character to hear the instructions for that single character. When they touch the place the character needs to go, and then come back to touch the character again, the little guy will travel right to the spot they told it to go! If they touch anywhere else on the page, the character just sits.



·        Or maybe you want to set up a sorting activity. You might want students to match clothing to the correct season.  Perhaps you want students to put words in one of two categories depending on the sound in the words. The easiest method would be dragging and dropping (a future lesson), but if students can only click, you can use triggers to set this up accessible activity. Click here for a sample you can use to create activities like this.

(Just a warning: this is pretty complicated! Play with the sample activity until the process makes sense. I won’t even confess to how many hours it took me to work out the bugs on this...).



·        Did you know that an individual object can trigger itself to loop through a series of animations? This means you can create buttons that change through a series of colors, making it easy to collect data in an opinion poll or with hot/cold lunch count. See the Attendance Sample here. There’s a great tutorial from PPT Alchemy on how to do just this here.

Creating complex triggers is obviously more complicated than making simple ones. You have to have a clear idea of the order of events and how one trigger will lead to the next. But you CAN do it!

a)      Plan the sequence of events in the order they will occur (this is the hardest part)

b)      Insert the object that will act as the trigger

c)      Insert objects in the trigger sequence

d)      Save

e)      Assign the trigger event to the trigger object to launch the sequence. Be sure this is listed first in the Custom Animation tag list.

f)       Assign actions and timings to the remaining objects

g)      Save

h)      Test slide and correct anything that doesn’t play nice

i)        Format any Magic Invisible Boxes to 100% transparency and remove borders

j)        Save, making sure slide show is saved to “Browse at Kiosk”

Here are some important things to remember about triggers:

·        Triggers only apply to animations. Action buttons are already clickable, provided the slide show is set up to run in kiosk mode (see instructions here). If you need a review on the difference between animations and actions, that is covered here 

The unfortunate thing is that animations can’t trigger actions. Rats. Microsoft, are you listening? Can you fix this?

·        Triggers run only in Kiosk mode. Be sure to set your slide show to “browse at kiosk.”



·        Save your work OFTEN. Trust me on this one!!!



If you want some more practice with triggers, check out these helpful outside tutorials:

1)      labeling shapes



As always, please feel free to email me with questions. I’m eager to hear how it’s going for you!

* * * * * * * * *

For information on all the techniques we’ve used in PowerPoint to get to this advanced lesson, check out these posts:



1. PowerPoint as Assistive Technology--REALLY! (Intro)

2.
AT Considerations for Creating Activities in PowerPoint (making sure the activities you design support the needs of your students)

3.
Adapting Books for Computer Access (utilizes PowerPoint)

4. Shortcuts for Making PowerPoint Activities (easy steps for bringing elements from other activities into your new ones)

5.
Transitions: Basic PowerPoint AT (increasing engagement through cues between pages)

6.
Actions and Hyperlinks: Basic PowerPoint AT (moving around within the activity)

7.
Animations: Basic PowerPoint AT (controlling the behavior of objects on a single page)

8.
Magic Invisible Boxes: Advanced PowerPoint AT (using invisible boxes to control actions and animations)