Impress Students with Interactive Presentations

An amazing interactive presentation always helps teachers and tutors to enhance their instruction. No matter you are a teacher or trainer, if you want to please your students or trainee with intriguing presentations, this the right article for you.

Many people may understand the value of a good presentation for knowledge delivery, but only few of them do know how to make such one. Usually, teachers or instructors use PowerPoint to create courseware. Without a doubt, this is an easy and efficient way to help clarifying and activating the teaching content. But, a presentation only with words and pictures is not attractive enough to get focus. Fortunately, MS PowerPoint allows user to launch an external program, e.g. exe and flash, while playing slideshows. These elements may possibly bring clarity and fun to classes or lectures, but the problem is how many non-computer-science teachers or professors know to build those elements to content their students or audience. For sure, there are few. Then, how to create those interactive elements becomes the main hurdle to author attractive learning content or presentation.


Consider .exe first. What do .exe programs help? Take physics class for example. Usually, a VB based exe program is used to perform some physical phenomenon, e.g. beats, in phase, out phase, interference, diffraction and so on. Remember, these demonstrations are not only show the phenomenon, but also demonstrate the laws, which is more important than the phenomenon itself. In other words, the related parameters should be allowed to change to meet specify needs, such as, wave length, frequency, initial phase, etc. If not, a video would be more helpful. Ok, now the sticking point is VB programming. Oh, god, what a jerk! Luckily, in most conditions, those programs are universal for familiar content, for instance, a program demonstrate the phenomenon beats. The basic parameters would be possibly changed are frequency, amplitude, and phase difference. A program satisfying this is suitable for any class about beats. And, this kind of demos are available on Internet by searching ‘** demonstration’. Since it’s easy to get one, why bother to make one.

Then, flash. Flash is capable to manage most functions .exe programs can. Besides, flash is easier to please audience by visual animation looking than the .exe programs, and it is more acceptable in programming skill. Thus, the flash demo is becoming more and more popular. Just like exe programs, flash demos can be downloaded from the web, but only one element would never get an appropriate one from the Internet. That is quiz. This must be distinct from different individuals. Even in the same course, teachers would like to have their own quiz. Now the problem becomes simple, build a flash quiz to enhance the interaction of presentations.

Why quiz?

Quizzes can help reviewing knowledge, and solidifying the instruction. What’s more important is quiz is absolutely interactive. Furthermore, a good flash quiz will get students’ focus. Beyond all doubt, Macromedia Flash is the best choice to create the most impressive and exclusive quizzes, but if we take a compromise on appearance, we are possible to avoid programming. Articulate, Tanida, and Wondershare all provide powerful flash quiz tools.

Articulate QuizMaker (QM), the most powerful, also the highest price $399, quiz tool among the three. It is capable to build BOTH online survey and graded quiz. Friendly interface, users could start to make quizzes without a guide. There are 21 question types to choose, 11 for graded quizzes, True/False, Multiple Choice, Multiple responses, Match (drag and drop), Sequence (drag and drop), Fill In The Blank, Click Map (hotspot), Word Bank, Match (drop down), Sequence (drop down), Numeric, 10 for surveys and polls (Consider survey is not necessary for a class presentation, I only list the graded question types).

Tanida QuizBuilder (QB), $199, and Wondershare QuizCreator (QC), $99.95, less comprehensive than QuizMaker, are only focusing on the graded quizzes. The interface of QB is very neat, while the QC’s is very cute and pretty. The later one is more intuitive than the first. It is especially worth noting that only QC gives a question outline in the left part of its interface, it helps much on clarifying the quiz structure. They both provide 8 question types to choose. QB has the first 8 types of QM; QC has the first 7 types of QM, plus Short Essay.
Besides, Articulate and Wondershare provide robust flash authoring tools (make flash from PowerPoint), and they both can incorporate with their own quiz tools seamlessly. Turn PPT presentations to flash ones could reduce size dramatically, and can be played in computers without Office.

All of the three products are easy to use, require no programming skills. Comparatively, QM is more professional than other two, but the price is triple as the QC. QB is not bad; the only deficit is the company provides no cooperative products. To find more details about these products please visit their products website.

Articulate: http://www.articulate.com
Wondershare: http://www.sameshow.com
Tanida: http://www.quiz-duilder.com

Now, download and try. Build your own intriguing presentations, and then share them with your lovely students! If you have any idea please feel free to share your experience with me.