Top Ten Tips for Using
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Contents 1 Encourage class discussions by using “polling” slides.......................................................................................................................................................... 3 2 Use Drawing slides to give students hands-on experience with ideas and relationships....................................................................................... 4 3 Use the alignment options to accommodate different scripts or differently shaped objects............................................................................... 5 4 Manage mouse hardware effectively.......................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 5 Create a slide “parking lot” or resting space for student mice pointers........................................................................................................................ 7 6 Create Mouse Mischief game rules............................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 7 Encourage teamwork by creating class presentations to play in Team mode............................................................................................................ 9 8 Have your students create multiple-mouse slides................................................................................................................................................................. 10 9 Put Mouse Mischief into students’ hands................................................................................................................................................................................. 11 10 Share multiple-mouse presentations through Office.com................................................................................................................................................. 12
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Encourage class discussions by using “polling” slides. A “polling” slide is a Multiple Choice slide that does not have a correct answer. After students select the answer that they think is best, you can use the results to promote a thoughtful discussion. Leading your students through the process of considering an idea and forming their own conclusions engages them and helps them develop critical-thinking skills. Use polling slides to help generate and structure class discussions.
Ideas for using polling slides in multiple-mouse presentations ●● Create a slide that asks students which outdoor activities they think are most beneficial to them. After students have selected their favorite activities, you can lead a class discussion about how each activity is beneficial, with the goal of encouraging students to pursue an active lifestyle.
●● Create a presentation about a topic with multiple points of view, for example, climate change or poverty. Present the different positions with their arguments and evidence. To end the presentation and review student opinions, create a polling slide that lists the points of view. Students can discuss the results and defend their choices. ●● Ask your students to help you create a polling slide. After you have presented a presentation about endangered species, for example, ask them to come up with three or four answers to the question: “How can we protect endangered species?” Summarize and type the responses, and then use the slide to poll the class.
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Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
Create a polling slide 1. On the Multiple-Mouse tab, click New Slide. 2. Apply a Yes/No or Multiple Choice layout. On a Multiple Choice slide, the number of answers on the slide depends on the question and how many options you want to give the students. 3. Add a question to the slide title and add answers for each of the answer buttons. Do not specify a correct answer.
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Use Drawing slides to give students hands-on experience with ideas and relationships. Best practices for drawing activities Drawing slides work best when small groups of students draw on them at the same time. If many students draw at the same time, their drawings interfere with each other due to lack of space. One strategy to accommodate many students drawing at the same time is to create separate drawing spaces on the Drawing slide and number those spaces. Then, assign each student or team to a drawing space.
Drawing slides offer students direct interaction with the presentation material. You can create slides that require students to select an object from a group, make associations between objects, draw a shape, or other hands-on tasks. The tactile experience of drawing during a lesson gives students an alternative way to absorb new information. Here are some examples of Drawing slides that enable students to: ●● Finish a picture or diagram that you have started ●● Draw a line between objects or words to show relationships ●● Circle an object, or fill it with color, to select it from a group ●● Indicate a location on a map or coordinates on a grid ●● Mark the rhyme scheme of a poem ●● Show steps in a process by drawing arrows from one image to the next ●● Trace or draw a route on a map ●● Add events to a historical timeline ●● Mark the differences between two almost identical pictures
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Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
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Use the alignment options to accommodate different scripts or differently shaped objects. When you select a Yes/No or Multiple Choice slide layout, you can decide how to align the answers on the slide. To display the different alternatives, in the Alignment and Answers group, click the Position button. Use these options to display different kinds of information or to create slides for different languages.
Change the alignment on a slide To see how the Position options can provide alternatives for your slide layout, follow these steps: 1. Click the Multiple-Mouse tab. 2. Click New Slide.
Ideas for using different answer positions on slides ●● If you are teaching in a language that is normally written top-tobottom and right-to-left, or if you are teaching one of these languages as a second language, you will want to position the answer buttons using the Top align vertical, right to left option.
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Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
●● If you have images of buildings and you want students to select the tallest one, you might want to position the answer buttons using the Top align or Bottom align option so you have more room to display the images. ●● If you have used a photo or other image as a slide background, you might want to use the Align right or a different position option to avoid covering up an essential part of the photo.
3. Click Yes/No or click Multiple Choice and specify the number of answers. 4. Click Position. Click one of the other options in the list besides the default position and see how each option lays out the slide. Click Position again and click another option to see what that option does to the slide layout. You can see how the different ways of positioning elements of a slide layout can tailor the slide to the information you want to teach.
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Manage classroom mice effectively. Mouse Mischief introduces some complexity in your classroom, and although engaging your students through interactivity with the presentation is well worth the complexity, working with lots of mice sometimes produce unforeseen challenges. Here are some strategies for managing mice in the classroom. ●● If you are using wireless mice, make sure that you keep batteries easily available. If the batteries in a student’s mouse are low, you can have the student replace the batteries before you start the presentation.
●● If you have them, use wireless mice to avoid laying cables throughout the classroom. Cables can be tripping hazards. Where you must lay cables, fasten them to the floor with cable protectors or tape, and insist that students remain in their seats until the presentation is finished and the cables are removed. ●● Make sure students check the battery strength of their wireless mice at the beginning of the presentation, on the page where students join the presentation
individually or in teams. If a student’s mouse pointer moves slowly, or the buttons on the screen do not respond to a click, replace the batteries before you advance the presentation to the first slide. The cause for the symptom described might also be the wireless connection or some interference, and not necessarily the batteries.
Best practices for managing mice ●● Students can add challenges to managing so many mice. Excited students don’t want to wait while you set up the presentation before they can move their mice, which can interfere with you starting the presentation. The most effective way to prevent students from moving their mice before you’re ready to begin is to give the mice to the students right before you’re ready for them to begin to participate.
Don’t hand out student mice yet. 6
Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
●● Keep the mice in a box or bucket so they’re all together. After you have started the presentation, and you have identified your mouse as the teacher mouse, you can have a student hand out mice to everyone. If you’re using wireless mice, you can turn on the mice and synchronize them before you hand them out, while the students are occupied with another task.
Hand out mice now.
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Create a slide “parking lot” or resting space for student mice pointers. Classroom management can be challenging when excited students are each equipped with a mouse and are waiting for a class activity to begin. One way to handle this is to create a “parking lot” or resting area on each multiple-mouse slide where students can put their mouse pointers until the teacher calls on them. You can create your own metaphor instead of a “parking lot.” For example, you could call it a “mouse nest” and find a cute image to represent the name. Better yet, ask your students to help you think of a good name and design for the space.
Create a parking lot Use the tools on the PowerPoint Insert tab to add a basic shape, text, clip art, or picture to the slide. 1. On the PowerPoint Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, click Shapes to see a collection of basic shapes that you can add to the slide. 2. After you decide on a suitable shape and insert it into the slide, format its color or border by right-clicking the shape and clicking Format Shape to display the Format Shape dialog box. 3. Use tools on the Insert tab to add a text box to contain a title that identifies the image as the mouse parking lot, or to add a picture from Clip Art or from your computer or network. 4. When you have all the elements for the parking lot in place and formatted the way you want them, you can group them into one image to ensure that all the elements stay together. Click each element while you hold down the CTRL key until all of the elements are selected, right-click the selected elements, point to Group, and then click Group.
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Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
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Create Mouse Mischief game rules. Suggestions for creating Mouse Mischief rules for the classroom ●● What students should do if the batteries in a wireless mouse are too weak ●● Where students should rest their mouse pointers while they wait for the teacher to call on them ●● When students can begin drawing on a Drawing slide
Another strategy for maintaining control when each student has a mouse is to work with your students to create a “Mouse Mischief Code of Conduct.” In class, create a slide that lists rules that everyone should follow when the class is using Mouse Mischief. Ask students to suggest rules for the code of conduct. When the code of conduct is complete, add the slide that contains the code of conduct to the beginning of every multiplemouse presentation. If anyone violates
one of the rules while you are playing a multiple-mouse presentation, back up the presentation to the code of conduct and point out which rule was broken. You can also teach the rules to students as a separate multiple-mouse presentation early in the academic year, before you show your students any other multiplemouse presentations. The multiple-mouse interactivity will help motivate students to learn and remember the rules.
Ideas for creating and using a Mouse Mischief Code of Conduct If the code of conduct consists mainly of the students’ ideas, they will feel more invested in following the rules. If they find it hard to think of rules, you can describe scenarios that show how students might use their mice to interfere with others, and then ask the students to develop a rule against the behavior. For example, you could start by describing these scenarios: ●● A student rests his mouse pointer in the orange box on the very first setup slide where the teacher must identify his or her mouse pointer as the teacher’s. This behavior delays the start of the presentation while the teacher figures out whose mouse is in the box.
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Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
●● A student scribbles randomly on every Drawing slide and destroys her classmates’ work. A variation of this behavior is selecting the eraser on the drawing palette and erasing classmates’ drawings. ●● When playing as part of a team, a student clicks an answer different from the one that he and his teammates agreed on, causing Mouse Mischief to reject the answers of everyone on the team.
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Encourage teamwork by creating class presentations to play in Team mode. Sometimes, it works best to set up a multiple-mouse presentation in Individual mode and have students supply their own answers to each question. Other times, you want to foster teamwork. You can create that atmosphere by setting up a multiplemouse presentation in Team mode. In Team mode, students participate in teams, pre-assigned by the teacher. When the presentation begins and students join a team, their mouse pointers change shape to match the picture for the team that they joined. On Yes/No and Multiple
Choice slides, all team members must click the same answer; if they do not, Mouse Mischief ignores their responses and no answer is recorded. Working in teams fosters cooperation and helps students develop conflict-resolution and problem-solving skills. Because all members of the team must click the same answer, students must collaborate on the answer. That means that they have to discuss any differences, give evidence to support their choices, and think of ways to resolve differences.
Set up a multiple-mouse presentation for team play 1. On the Multiple-Mouse tab, click Play Slide Show. 2. On the slide after the one on which you identify your mouse as the teacher’s mouse, click Team mode. 3. On the slide titled Students: To join a team, click a picture, direct each student to click one of the team pictures to join that team. As they do so, the numbers above each picture change to reflect the number of students in each team. The box in the upper-right corner of the screen keeps track of how many students have joined the presentation and how many remain. 4. When all students have joined teams, display the presentation controls and start the presentation.
Ideas for using Team mode ●● Create slides that contain math ●● Ask students a tough question problems and ask the students to that will prompt discussion and solve each problem by themselves, require them to apply knowledge and then compare their answers with or reason to an unfamiliar problem. their team mates. Each team must For example, after you play slides select the correct corresponding that explain the principles of answer on the slide. To make the gravitational force and distance, problem more challenging, try to ask them questions that make them anticipate mistakes students might apply what they have learned to new make, and include the incorrect instances, such as whether Saturn answers that those mistakes might travels faster or slower in its orbit generate on the multiple-mouse around the Sun than Earth does. slide.
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Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
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Have your students create multiple-mouse slides. Create multiple-mouse slides with your students’ help. You can start with a short PowerPoint presentation that has no multiple-mouse slides, and ask students to offer ideas for multiple-mouse slides to add to the presentation. Show students the first few instructional slides and ask them what kinds of questions they would add to make the presentation more interesting and informative. Make sure that they specify which kind of multiple-mouse slide would best suit the information—multiple choice, Yes/No, or Drawing. It helps if students have seen other multiple-mouse presentations so that they know which kinds of slides are possible. Insert a new slide at an appropriate location in the presentation and apply the multiple-mouse layout that the students recommended.
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Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
Next, ask students to suggest how to phrase a question for the slide. For multiple-choice questions, ask them to suggest answers. Students can also offer ideas on what kind of images or other design elements to include in the slide, and where they can find them online. Repeat this process with other sets of instructional slides from the presentation. Encourage students to design at least one slide by using each of the three multiplemouse slide types. Intersperse the new multiple-mouse slides at appropriate locations among the standard PowerPoint slides. When you have finished creating the presentation, on the Multiple-Mouse tab, click Play Slide Show so that the students can enjoy the slides that they helped to create.
Insert a new Mouse Mischief slide into an existing presentation 1. In the Slides pane, click the space between existing slides where you want to insert a new slide. 2. On the Multiple-Mouse tab, click New Slide. 3. In the Layouts group, click the layout that you want to use for the slide.
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Put Mouse Mischief into students’ hands. More Ideas ●● Students’ presentations can be an opportunity for them to apply knowledge that they have learned in other areas of study, such as grammar, spelling, and the logical progression of ideas. ●● Require students to include at least one of each kind of multiple-mouse slide, and then discuss with them which kind of slide is most suitable for each kind of information. ●● Students can create multiple-mouse presentations to help tutor students in their own class or in other classes. They can play these presentations with the other students, or add them to a school e-library of multiplemouse presentations that any student can access for self-directed learning. ●● Students can create a multiple-mouse presentation for a School Open House or Back-to-School Evening, in which they teach a topic and use Yes/ No slides and polling slides to get feedback from parents.
If your school has several computers equipped with PowerPoint, encourage inquiry and creativity by asking your students to build part of a presentation. After you teach the main points of a presentation, group the students into small teams and assign each team to study one part of the presentation in-depth, and then have them create one or more standard PowerPoint slides and one or more multiplemouse slides that teach that group’s piece of the presentation. Later, incorporate each team’s slides into a complete presentation and play the presentation the next day. The presentation
Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
You can also assign teams of students to create complete multiplemouse presentations, and then have each team show their presentation to the class. Give each team a topic to explore in-depth. Each team should do some research to identify the major ideas of their topic and display standard PowerPoint slides that cover the information. Then, they should create multiple-mouse slides that assess the information that is provided in the presentation.
Let students create their own multiple-mouse presentations Give your students an opportunity to teach other students with multiple-mouse presentations. Teaching other students will give them a sense of confidence, responsibility, and belonging, and help them learn in new ways. Many people learn best when they’re teaching. Creating multiple-mouse presentations for younger students can also help your students review material. For example, early in the school term, students frequently review the previous year’s mathematics concepts.
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showcases the students’ work and helps them review the material they learned the day before.
The same material might be new to the students in the previous grade. As part of their review process, your students can create multiple-mouse presentations that address these math concepts. Later in the term, when the students in the previous grade start to work on the same material, your students can show their multiplemouse presentations to the younger class.
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Share multiple-mouse presentations through Office.com. If you have problems getting started creating your own multiple-mouse presentations, or if you just want some ideas, download some multiple-mouse presentation templates from Microsoft Office.com. Although these files are called “templates,� they are short multiplemouse presentations about various subjects. You can use the presentations as they are, or you can change and add to them by using your own ideas and images. You can find multiple-mouse presentation templates quickly by starting from the
Mouse Mischief start window, from the Mouse Mischief website, or you can go directly to the Office.com Templates page and browse to the multiple-mouse presentations. After you have created a multiple-mouse presentation, you can share it with other teachers. If you have a Windows Live ID, you can submit your presentation to Office.com where it will be stored as a template that other teachers can download and use.
Find and download multiple-mouse presentation templates 1. Click Start, and then click Microsoft Mouse Mischief. 2. Click Find and share multiple-mouse presentations. 3. Scroll to a template that you want to download.
Visit the Mouse Mischief Community Blog (http://go.microsoft.com/ fwlink/?LinkId=196053) to find more ideas and share your own tips, lesson plans, and best practices. From there, you can join Mouse Mischief on Facebook or participate in the Twitter conversation about Mouse Mischief. Also visit Office.com to download starter presentations (http://go.microsoft.com/ fwlink/?LinkId=196054) that you can use and change to suit your students. 12
4. Point to the thumbnail or the title of the presentation, and then click Download. 5. Save the template to your computer. By default, the computer will save the template to the Microsoft Office Templates folder. You can change this location if you want to. You can also go directly to the Office.com Templates page to find templates.
Top Ten Tips for Using Microsoft Mouse Mischief
Upload a multiple-mouse presentation template 1. Go to the Microsoft Office Online templates page. 2. Click in the bottom right corner, or click the Submit a template link under Community Resources. Sign in with your Windows Live ID. 3. On the Registration page, in the Choose Display Name box, type the name you want displayed by the content you submit. 4. In the Template Submission Form, click the Browse button and navigate to the multiple-mouse lesson on our computer that you want to upload. Double-click the file. Note: Make sure that the file you want to upload meets all the file limitations noted on the page. For example, it must be a PowerPoint 2010 or 2007 file that is not larger than 10 MB. 5. The file name of your lesson will automatically be entered as the title for your lesson. If you want to change the title, you can type a new title in the Enter a title box. You can also type a description in the Enter a description box. A description is not necessary, but adding one is recommended, because it will help other teachers decided more quickly if your lesson is appropriate for their classes or not. 6. In the Select categories box, click the choose manually (advanced) link. In the Manual category entry box, scroll to the Presentations heading, and then click MultipleMouse presentations. 7. Click Submit. A Thank You screen will appear, where you can easily submit more lessons if you wish. Your lesson will be reviewed and Office online will contact you via your Windows Live e-mail address about whether it has been accepted and posted on the site.