I think I am giving up PowerPoint. Its probably become the most overused piece of software in education and I am so sick of creating them.
When I started teaching with technology PowerPoint made a lot of sense for my direct instruction lessons. At the time creating these files was very time intensive, but I thought it would get a little better. I did find some shortcuts like Googling for PowerPoints first, creating outlines in Word and sending them to PowerPoint, and sharing with friends. Two years later, I feel like I am still spending SO much time creating these things and I am beginning to wonder how effective they are. Initially my students were mesmerized by images and video clips being displayed on the screen, but I have been noticing that they seem to be losing interest. On top of that I kind of feel like PowerPoint has stolen the soul of some of my lessons.
I have been suffering from major PowerPoint burn out since the end of last school year. I was so happy in May when I realized I had made my last one! When I opened up PowerPoint this year that techno nausea came back. Just to be different I started using Keynote. It has some nice features and looks great, but in many ways it is PowerPoint-lite. Would it be so hard to take a Microsoft product, copy all of its features, and then make it better? 
Perhaps I will take a little PowerPoint/Keynote hiatus and return to the days of running around in front of the white board with a bunch of different colored markers. Any better ideas?
Joe
Photo: Welcome to PowerPoint by Garethjmsaunders
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Hi Joe,
I like Splashcast for allowing narrated, embeddable PPTs that students can leave audio and text comments on, and more. Just discovered that Friday with a physics teacher who’s recently taken the plunge into wikis and more.
Speaking of whom….I’m really interested in what you’re doing in your classrooms, and hope you don’t mind that I’m emailing both your class blog URL and this edublog to all the science teachers in my dept. I hope something comes of it.
(And when are you going to let us see that textbook wiki? Sure you can’t let us look but not comment?)