Day 14 – PowerPoint 2013 on the Surface RT

30 Days with a Surface RT for Teachers

Teaching and Learning with a Windows 8 Tablet

Are you a fan of PowerPoint? Does the phrase “Death by PowerPoint” send a chill down your spine? Whether you are a fan of PowerPoint or not, I am sure we have all had less than stellar experiences sitting through a PowerPoint presentation, but it does not have to be this way.

For all the critics of PowerPoint out there I suggest we first take a look at the instructional approach taken when creating PowerPoints before passing judgment on the tool.  

Like a golfer that blames a club for a terrible tee shot, so it is with PowerPoint for some. Do you blame that boring PowerPoint for not getting students engaged in the lesson or could it be your instructional approach?

PowerPoint is just a tool and the presentation you produce will become what you make of it, for better or worse.

Students need to be able to organize and present content and PowerPoint is a great choice for presentations. Too often students focus on the animations and transitions available in the tool rather than the content that needs sorting through. Discovering what is needed and what can be left out is challenging for most students. I have seen many PowerPoint slide decks with 50 or more slides that need to be covered during a 20 minute presentation.

PowerPoint 2013 on the Surface RT has the familiar bullet point slide show templates that we have all become so accustomed to over the years. Some will still copy and paste large blocks of text into PowerPoint slides and read them word…. for…. word to an audience. Some will go overboard with the animations and transitions, others will go for artsy pictures and avoid text all together. There is no one best way to use PowerPoint and that is what makes it fun.

The trick of an effective PowerPoint presentation is to find a balance and like most things in life moderation is the key. You will need to use your judgment to find a balance with the content, presentation options, and instructional strategies you wish to be cover during the time allotted for a presentation.

PowerPoint has supported inking for years and being able to annotate over a slide while explaining things is very valuable for learning new things. I am guessing that 50% of teachers do not even know that there are inking capabilities already in PowerPoint and that you do NOT need a touchscreen to use them.

Since the PowerPoint 2003 version (maybe even longer) you have been able to hover your mouse in the lower left-hand corner of a PowerPoint slide (when in Slide Show view) and access the Pen tool for annotating over a slide. It’s always been there, the ghosted icons will appear in the lower left corner when you move the pointer over them.

 

What makes this annotation ability really great on the Surface RT is that the RT does have a touchscreen and you can use your finger to select the Pen tool or laser pointer to direct a students attention to a point you are teaching. I can draw better with my finger than with the mouse.

Another really cool feature of PowerPoint 2013 on the Surface RT is the absolutely fantastic “Presenter Mode” that allows the teacher to have their slides with notes and a preview of the upcoming slide on the RT screen but when the RT is connected to a projector or HDTV the students only see the current slide.

 

The Presenter View also gives easier access to the Pen Tool, Laser Pointer, and forward and back arrows to advance to the next or previous slide. It even has a timer to keep track where you are at in your presentation to compare to the available time you have left.

 

I have found a couple of missing features on the RT version of PowerPoint 2013, most notably is the lack of the ability to record your PowerPoint presentation on the Surface RT. If you want audio/video recording capability you will have to use a device with the x86 version of PowerPoint 2013 like the Surface Pro.

The last benefit of PowerPoint 2013 that I want to mention is that it is loaded locally on the Surface RT for free. What this means for teachers and students is that you can create presentations anywhere, anytime, even if no Internet connection is available.

 

Using cloud services is great when everything works but too often in a school setting there may be areas of the school where wireless is unavailable or unreliable. It is good to have the option to work locally on the Surface RT until you can get to an Internet connection.

Until next time...

Keep on Learning,

Tom Grissom, PhD

Follow me on Twitter @tomgrissom

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