Words; They make up the majority of our presentations, worksheets, and most other things we do in the classroom. How ever many things we write for our students most of us only use a handful of fonts. There’s nothing wrong with Times New Roman, Ariel and the other common fonts that are installed by default on many computers (although personally I am not keen on the over used Comic Sans), but if we all use these same few then all our worksheets and presentations look very similar.

One quick and easy way to make our presentations and worksheets stand out is to use new and different fonts, which happily are to be found free and plentiful on several easy to use websites. These fonts have been created by all sorts of people and shared on these websites for people to use, some without any restrictions and many others for non-commercial use.

Find free fonts

If you type ‘free fonts’ into your favourite search engine then you will find loads of sites with free fonts. The sites vary in quality and ease of use. I am going to tell you about four sites that are all easy to navigate and provide easy downloads of their selection of fonts.

Dafont.com has over 8000 fonts at the time of writing, which are organised into nine main categories such as ‘Fancy’, ‘Gothic’, ‘Script’ and then lots of sub categories. when you have selected a category you can browse the fonts in a list with loads of options for how you view them. You can compare the fonts with your choice of text, choose the size of the preview, whether to include accents and whether to see variants (e.g. bold). There are direct download links so that when you find the font(s) you want downloading them is easy and quick. Dafont.com is probably my favourite font site and is the first I go to when I need a new font.

1001 Free Fonts has been online since 1998 making it ancient in internet terms. With its simple layout, listing fonts with download links and the option of custom previews it doesn’t look it though. You can browse the fonts alphabetically or by category. 1001 Free fonts claims to be the most popular free fonts site on the web with over 1 billion downloads in its 10 year life, so it may well be worth a look.

A simpler site than the previous two, but including 2500 fonts, Get Free Fonts doesn’t have the same polish as dafont or 1001. There are no options to preview with your choice of text or order the list as you want. The fonts are arranged alphabetically by font name, so unless you know the name of the font you want it may be more difficult to find an appropriate one.

Like Dafont.com and 1001 Free Fonts, Urban fonts organises its 8000 free fonts into categories and allows custom preview text. There are lots of great fonts with easy download links and Urban fonts would be a great option, but it is slightly let down by the inclusion of pop up adverts on the site.

Install your new fonts

Once you have got your fancy new fonts downloaded to your computer it’s time to install them. The method of installing fonts varies slightly depending on which operating system. Below are brief instructions for the three most popular.

Before you start you need to make such that your fonts are not in a zip file. If they are, extract them before you begin.

Windows XP: Copy the font file(s) (.ttf, .otf or .fon) into the Fonts folder, which is usually C:\Windows\Fonts.

(You can also get to the Fonts folders via: Start Menu > Control Panel > Appearance and Themes > Fonts)

Windows Vista: Right click on the font files (.ttf, .otf or .fon) and select Install.

Mac OS X: Put the files into /Library/Fonts (for all users), or into /Users/Your_username/Library/Fonts (for you only).

Once you have installed your fonts (or even if you don’t add any new fonts to your system) you may want a way to compare the fonts you have to choose the best one for any particular task. There are a number of font management programs that will allow you to do this. If you are using Windows you could try The Font Thing which is an old, but effective program, or for either Windows or Mac OS Linotype FontExplorer X is a more modern and feature rich option. Both programs are free.

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Have you ever wanted to grab a bit of a website, document or picture from your computer screen and use it in a PowerPoint or on a worksheet?

You could take a screen shot with the print screen button, but if you don’t want the whole screen you then need to crop it in some way. A better solution is to use a screen capture utility that allows you to capture only part of the screen, or even better any free form area you like. Windows Vista has a built in tool called the ‘snipping tool’ that does that, but if you want that functionality on Windows XP you need a program called Snippy.

Snippy is a very small free program that when running has a little scissors icon in the task bar at the bottom of the screen. When you want to capture a screen snip you click on the icon and then draw around the area you want to capture.

You can choose whether to have a line around the snip as well as the colour and thickness of the line. A rectangular area can be captured by holding down the shift key whilst dragging.

Once you have made your snip, the picture is placed in the computers clipboard to be pasted into whatever program you want. You can also save the picture in one of several picture formats (bmp, jpeg, gif, tiff, png) by right clicking on the icon and selecting save as.

Snippy can be downloaded free from its website.

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So you have your lesson all set out in PowerPoint with your explanations ready. Now you want to show a website as part of your lesson. Normally that would mean closing the PowerPoint show and switching to your web browser to show the page you want, which takes time and could detract from your flow.

There is an alternative. Using a special PowerPoint plugin it is possible to have a live web page appear in a PowerPoint presentation. This is not just a screen shot, but acts just like your web browser and allows full navigation of whatever web sites you want.

The plugin is called LiveWeb and is available as a free download. When it has been installed (which is done as with any other program) you will see two new options at the bottom of the ‘Insert’ menu in PowerPoint. It is then easy to add a web pages to your Presentation as follows.

1. Click on ‘Web pages…’ in the PowerPoint ‘Insert’ menu.

2. When the LiveWeb dialogue appears, enter the address of the web page(s) you want and click add and when you are ready click next.

3. You then have the option of having the web page update when you visit the slide and eliminating page flicker when the web page is loaded.

4. On the next page you can choose how much space the wb page will take on the PowerPoint slide (so you can add other things like a title or notes) and the position on the slide.

5. When you are happy with the settings click finish to exit the dialogue.

After you have added a web page you can change the settings via the ‘Edit page property’ option in PowerPoints ‘insert’ menu.

You can download the LiveWeb plugin from its website. Make sure you get the correct version depending on which version of PowerPoint you have.

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Most children love playing games and flash based games are very popular. There are lots of educational flash games available and they can be a useful tools in the classroom for reinforcing or revising topics. They can be used with the whole class or for individual pupils on computers.

The problem with the many of the games I find for use with pupils is that they never do quite what I want them to. The questions may not be all on the topic I want or the website they are based on may have too many other distractions that make if difficult for pupils to concentrate on what they should be doing.

A solution to these problems is to make your own games that are based on the questions you want to focus on and that can be run from a school network or a website that you have control over. Unfortunately developing games in flash requires a lot of skill and knowledge that most of us don’t have the time or skills to develop. That is where Contentgenerator.net comes in. Contentgenerator.net provides a series of programs that make it easy to create your own flash games to use with pupils. Many of the programs are commercial, but are priced reasonably, while others are free.

Each program will create one type of game, for example a matching game or a game of teacher invaders. The programs are easy to use and all you need to do is enter some details about the questions, choose from a few options and the games are created for you ready to run. Rather than try to describe in more detail I have created a quick video showing how to make a ‘match up’ game.

When this is saved it produces a flash game that can be played straight from the computer or added to a website (a webpage is created for you).

You can open this game in a new window

Visit Contentgenerator.net to find out more. There is good support for the programs including an active user forum.

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Kerr-ching! The use of sound in the classroom (except teachers’ and pupils’ voices) is often overlooked. Almost everywhere that our pupils go they are used to hearing things and sound is used to reinforce messages all over the place. Try watching a TV game show and listening out for the sounds that accompany whatever the contestents are doing.

Obviously our classrooms aren’t TV studios and our lessons aren’t gameshows, but we can use sound to reinforce what we are teaching, or just to add another dimension to some of the things we do. One possiblity is to play music to the pupils while they are working, but that is a topic for another post. What I want to talk about is using sound effects rather than long pieces of music.

I sometimes like to play games with my classes to help introduce or reinforce a topic, maybe as a starter or plenary. It might be along the lines of a TV quiz like Who Wants to be a Millionaire or Countdown, or something like a simple team head to head quiz. I want the pupils to enjoy these and find them fun so I use the interactive whiteboard to make them visually engaging and I can use sound effects to add a further dimension. Nothing complex, maybe a ‘Ding’ for a correct answer or a round of applause at the end of a round.

There are lots of sound effects freely available on the internet. I have collected a few together in Mp3 format that you can download from here (Zip file – 1.17Mb).

When you have the sound effects you want to play the next decision is how you are going to play them. It is possible to use Windows media player, itunes or any other mp3 playing software, but that can be cumbersome as they are not designed for playing short sounds easily. A better alternative it to use some software designed for this purpose. There are several suitable programs around, most of which we originally designed for radio DJs to play their sound effects and jingles. The two I will talk about are both free and will do the job, but they are different mainly in the way that you play the sound effects. One is designed to be used with the computer keyboard and the other works well with a mouse.

Jazler Show

Jazler show is program designed for ‘Radio Automation’, but performs the job of playing sound effects well. The full version is a commercial (and expensive), but there is a free version that has everything you will need in the classroom.

You can set up different banks of sound effects with up to 30 sounds per bank. A sound is played by clicking on it’s name in one of the white boxes. You can set up a series of sounds to play in sequence by using the ‘decks’ on the left of the program.

To add a sound your right click on a button and browse for the file on your computer. You can preview the sound or choose only part of it to play. The sound adding screen is shown below.

Download Jazler Show free direct (.exe file – 10Mb)

(Chris Moyles) Sound Machine

Another option for playing sound effects is a program called the Sound Machine which is connected with the BBC radio DJ Chris Moyles. Sound machine is a simpler program than Jazler show and works by loading sound packs (paks) that contain a set of sound effects. Up to 4 sound paks can be loaded at once and the sounds are associated with keys on the computer keyboard.

You can view a list of the currently loaded sounds and the keys that will play them.

The sound machine and several sound paks can be downloaded from the chrismoyles.net website

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1 hour? 50 minutes? 30 minutes? Whatever the length of your lessons, you will probably want to divide them up into several shorter sections or tasks. Making your pupils aware of the timing of your lessons can encourage them to work with more purpose and focus than when they’re not sure how long they have. The other advantage of sharing timings is that it can help to keep track of the time when you are focused on the lesson and helping pupils.

Timing can rely on a normal clock on the wall, or on your watch, but in order to make everyone on the room most aware, a countdown timer is very useful. Using a timer in lessons is nothing new and a physical timer can be effective, but if you have a projector in your classroom then a software based timer may be the best option.

There are a number of different timer programs available on the internet. Some are very simple and do nothing more than count down from a set time, while others have loads of bells and whistles like multiple timers and reminders.

The six timers I am going to highlight are all simple to use and are ideal for the classroom. They all have the basic function of counting down from any time between a few seconds to several hours, but they each look different and work slightly differently. Some are more complex and need to be installed on your computer. Others are flash based and will run without being installed. They are simpler, but do have the advantage that they can be run full screen.

Cool Timer

Cool timer is a straight forward timer, but it does need to be installed on your computer. It includes the option to save preset times for quick access. The timer can be viewed as a large or small window and the colour scheme can be modified easily.

The timer will play a sound (some included or use your own) and / or scroll a message on the screen when the set time has elapsed. Cool timer can also be used as a stopwatch and can be set to stay on top of other windows.

Download Cool timer (zip file – 2.4Mb)

Compact timer

Compact timer is, as the name suggests as small on screen timer. It needs to be installed on your computer, but because of this can be set to run from when the computer starts. It also has the option to save preset timers and can be used as a stopwatch as well as a countdown timer. Compact timer can be set to stay on top of other windows and you can set the opacity in 25% steps. The timer will play a sound (or a sound file) when the time is up.

Download Compact timer (Zip file – 198Kb)

Ant 4 pizza timer

The interestingly named Ant 4 pizza timer was, you guessed it, designed to time pizza cooking, but it is a small discrete timer with the option to save multiple presets (or profiles). The program needs to be installed and once it is the settings are very simple. It will play a sound when time us up, but you don’t get a choice of sound.

Once you start the timer it displays a small movable countdown which stays above other windows. You can increase or decrease the time by 30 seconds at a time, but you can’t pause the time.

Download Ant 4 pizza timer (Zip file – 544Kb)

Interactive whiteboard clock

The interactive whiteboard clock is a simple small clock that runs without being installed. It includes three modes; clock, countdown and countup (stopwatch). The countdown time can be set in increments of 30 seconds and up to several hours and a small beep will sound when the time elapses. The clock will stay above other windows and the titlebar and buttons can be hidden by right clocking on the numbers.

Download Interactive whiteboard clock (Zip file – 122Kb)

Clockdb

Clockdb is a simple clock written in flash, but running as a .exe file that doesn’t need installing. This timer will show the remaining time in both digital and analogue forms simultaneously. Being flash based it is possible to change the size of the clock by dragging the window bigger, or show it full screen by selecting ‘view, fullscreen’.

Download Clockdb (Zip file – 832Kb)

Egg time 2

Egg time 2 is another flash based countdown timer and is the only on here that doesn’t run as a .exe file and therefore may work on computers with restrictions on running programs. After setting the time (in seconds) you want to count down from it will show an egg timer and / or a digital readout of time remaining along with other data such as time elapsed and percentage time remaining. Like Clockdb the size can be changed and it can be shown full screen.

Download Egg time 2 (Zip file – 422Kb)

I hope there is a timer there that suits the way you want to work. All six of the timers above are free to use. There is another timer that I would recommend called simply ‘Countdown clock’ from contactplus.com. That timer costs $19.99 (about £10), but does have a 30 day trial, and the website is down at the time of writing. That clock is very flexible, It can change size and the toolbar, buttons and even the background can be hidden. If you do try Countdown clock, go for the old version (3.3) as it is more flexible than the new one which is designed to work closely with PowerPoint.

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As teachers we have to manage large amounts of data. There are lots of different ways to organise lesson planning and record keeping from paper based planners and mark books to computer based solutions. As more and more of us have a laptop on our desks all the time it becomes more practical to have our data stored electronically.

Some teachers use tools such as Google Calendar to organise their planning and spreadsheets (e.g. Excel) are popular for registers and marks. These are good solutions and have benefits like the ability to access your planning from anywhere if you use web based tools like Google Calendar. The down side is that while these are good solutions, they are separate and it is difficult to connect the different bits of data together.

A few years ago I went looking for a better solution for organising my planning and marking and came across a program called Teachers Personal Information Manager (TPIM) and I (and several of my colleagues) have been using it ever since. This program is written by a teacher and is based very much around the sort of information that teachers need to have to hand every day in the classroom.

TPIM brings together into one place not just lesson planning, registers and marking, but also timetables, seating plans, student details, contact details, to do lists and post it note style reminders. Because all this is managed together in one program, the data can be linked together. For example the timetable automatically populates the lessons for each day in the planner and if a student is marked absent from a lesson and you set a homework task then their abesense will be noted in the grade sheet.

Timetable view

TPIM stores its data in a special Access database, so it can easily be backed up (the program will do it for you if you want) and if you use more than one computer you can take the database with you on a USB memory stick and open it in any copy of the program. It makes sense to start a new database each year with your timetable and classes. Data can be imported from and exported to Excel for class lists and existing grades etc.

There are several parts to the program which can be opened simultaneously as windows within the main outer window. Here are some brief details of the main sections.

Planning sheets

When you have set up your timetable (1 and 2 week timetables are supported) and entered your term dates, planning sheets are created for every lesson you will need to teach. You can view your planning either as a summary of your day, e.g. lessons 1 to 5. Or as an overview of all the lessons for one class for the week.

Daily planning view

A lesson can be opened from the summary view, giving you areas to state objectives, plan starters, main activities, plenaries, homework tasks, use of teaching assistants, resources needed (you can link files to a lesson, which can be opened from the program) and evaluate the lesson. Lessons can be exported to Word as cover sheets (with a register included) or as summary sheets for several lessons.

Register and mark sheets

When you have set up your class lists and timetable a register is created for each lesson you will teach. by default you can enter symbols to mark a student present (/ or \) and absent (o), but other codes can be added. For example I have codes for when students have a music lesson or are involved with some other in school activity.

Register view

Notes can be attached to pupils for each lesson, for recording specific incidents or information. A pupil summary is then available to see a record of a pupil over a series of lessons. Other information is available like percentage attendance for each pupil. An individual pupil’s data can be looked at in isolation (by hiding all other rows) so for example you could show a parent only their child’s data at a parents evening (this also works with grades).

The mark sheets work in a similar way and can be selected from the classes initial data view.

Initial class data view

You can create several mark sheets, so you could for example have one for home work, one for class work and another for test results. Data can be imported from and exported to Excel spreadsheets. Data columns can have a date attached and the program will inform you if a pupil was absent on that date, making it easy to keep track of who received homework or missed tests. You can sort data by any column and perform locical queries.

Seating plans, calendar and reminders

TPIM will automatically generate seating plans for your classes from the class list. You can then arrange the class as you want and change desk sizes, colours etc. Seating plans can be exported or viewed from the program via a projector. If you teach the same class in different rooms, you can create multiple seating plans for the same class.

The program includes a calendar which can import from Microsoft Outlook and Excel as well as export to Excel or Word. The layout is a fairly typical with weekends and holiday in different colours to weekdays. You have a choice between a daily view or a working week view alongside the monthly summary.

With the reminder function you can set reminders complete with notes and the option to repeat the reminder daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly. TPIM will pop up a message, play a sound or open a file or program for you. It’s a great feature if you occasionally forget when you are on duty, or when you should be at a meeting.

There are various other features and lots of little touches that make life easier for a busy teacher. For more details or to download the 30 day fully featured trial visit TPIM’s website. The program currently costs £40 for a single teacher license or £375 for a site license for all teachers in a school. Once purchased you will get free updates for as long as the author continues to work on the program.

The author Chris Farmer is a teacher and uses the program himself. Over the few years I have been using TPIM it has had regular updates and improvements. I recommend it to any teacher who is looking for an easier way to organise their planning and marking. For any Maths teachers I recommend having a look at his other software too, particularily Ten Quick Questions Pro.

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Edit: When I first posted about the Drag and Drop Macro I neglected to give proper credit to and details about it’s author Hans W. Hofmann.

The code is free for personal use and you can find more details and some enhancements on Hans W. Hofmann’s website at http://test.lemitec.de/ppt/Powerpoint%20DragAndDrop.htm

Although PowerPoint is a great resource and can be used to create all sorts of resources for use in lessons, one of the problems with the way it is normally used is that it’s not very interactive.

Turning PowerPoint presentations from a linear series of slides into something that can be interacted with can be achieved using a variety of methods including hyperlinks (which I will discuss in a future post), action buttons and now drag and drop elements.

With drag and drop elements you can create interactive games and activities such as the activity matching words and their definitions in my demonstration presentation below.

This is possible using a special macro to set items within a PowerPoint presentation to be dragged and dropped. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to create macros or are not even sure what they are, the macro has been made for you and all that you need to do is:

1. Download the presentation below (which already contains the macro)
2. Add any slides that you want to make your presentation (either make them from scratch or copy them from an existing presentation)
3. Delete the instruction and example slides

There are more detailed instructions within the demo presentation, which will guide you through setting up PowerPoint to allow macros to run (only needs doing once) as well as adding your slides and setting things to be dragged and dropped.

I suggest that you keep a copy of the demo presentation safe so you always have the instructions and work on a second copy when you create each new presentation. But don’t worry if you forget, you can download it again from here. When you have finished your presentation you can save it as ‘Read only’ which will mean that the bits that have been dragged around will return to where they were.

Here is the demo presentation. You can download it using the link below (the drag and drop doesn’t work in the online version).

Download drag and drop demo presentation

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I would guess that almost all teachers who have a projector use PowerPoint at some point. One thing that I find useful in helping to make the use of PowerPoint presentations as smooth as possible is keyboard shortcuts.

Instead of using the mouse to navigate the presentation using the keyboard makes a variety of actions quick and easy to access.

There are lots of shortcuts that can be used during presentations (as well as in editing), here are a few that I think are particularily useful:

• F5 – Start presentation

• Esc – End presentation

• B – Turn the screen black (press it again to continue the presentation)

• W – Turn the screen white (press it again to continue the presentation)

• Ctrl + P – Turn the pointer into a pen so that you can annotate the slide

• Ctrl + A – Change the pen back into a pointer

• E - Erase any annotations you have made with the pen on the slide

• Number + Enter – Jump to a slide by number (e.g. 5 + Enter would take you to slide 5)

• Home – Jump to the first slide

• A - Hide/show the pointer arrow (toggles between them)

If you have an interactive whiteboard (or even if you don’t) the annotation feature is really useful for temporary notes on your slides. The annotations are kept (unless you erase them) while you are in the presentation, but are not saved when you end the presentation.

To make these easier to remember, I have made a hint card that you can print out and will sit above a computer keyboard.

You can download it as a Pdf by clicking on the picture or link below.

PowerPoint shortcuts reference card (Pdf)

If you want to learn more PowerPoint shortcuts there are load of detailed resources on the web. Here are some that I have found to be useful:

PowerPoint 2003 shortcut keys – Big list of keyboard shortcuts for all areas of PowerPoint

PowerPoint 2003 quick reference card (Pdf) – Detailed reference card for working with Powerpoint 2003

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