PowerPoint game

Draft

Introduction

PPT is ubiquitous and therefore a good candidate for end-user authoring.

Homemade powerpoint games

In a constructionist perspective, the act of designing a game should be turned over to the children themselves.

“Overall, we are convinced that PowerPoint Games can be used as an effective learning tool in the social studies classroom. Based on the preliminary results designing their own PowerPoint Game was as effective as the other methods students used to review for their mid-term exam. We believe that it allows students' a greater degree of freedom than other forms of technology integration, such as Webquests, and that it promotes a deeper understanding that may be more evident in other forms of assessment â which may form the basis of future, larger scale research endeavours.” (Barbour et al., 2007)

The team involved in this project “have built a web site that provides teachers with an array of training materials, homemade PowerPoint game templates for use in the classroom, and a database of existing games they can download, use as is, or adapt. Many of the templates include the idea of using other ubiquitous technologies such as paper, cardboard, glue, and paper clips as part of the game design in order to mitigate the programming limitations of using PowerPoint.” (Barbour et al., 2007:55).

Links

• Homemade PowerPoint Games at Georgia Tech. From this website you may download:
  • Example games
  • PPT Templates (for children)
  • Teacher Instructions
  • Publications

• PowerPoint Games at Jefferson County Schools. Templates for teachers (to modify)

• Educational Games, PowerPoint and Office Games] by Drew Polly, UNC Charlotte.

Bibliography

• Barbour, M. K., Kinsella, J. & Rieber, L. P. (2007). PowerPoint games in a secondary laptop environment. Proceedings of the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education (2328-2332). Norfolk, VA: AACE. PDF

• Barbour, Michael; Lloyd P. Rieber, Gretchen Thomas, and Dawn Rauscher (2009). Homemade PowerPoint Games: A Constructionist Alternative to WebQuests, TechTrends 53 (5), 54-59. DOI:10.1007/s11528-009-0326-2

• Barbour, M. K., Thomas, G. B., Rauscher, D., & Rieber, L. P. (in press). Homemade Power-Point games: Preparing the next generation of teachers to use creative design activities in the classroom. In A Hirumi (Ed.), Digital video games for PreK-12 education: Engaging learners through interactive entertainment. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.

• Parker, J. S. (2004). Evaluating the impact of project based learning by using student created PowerPoint games in the seventh grade language arts classroom. Instructional Technololgy Monographs, 1(1). HTML

• Rieber, L. P., Barbour, M., Thomas, G., & Rauscher, D. (2008). Learning by designing games: Homemade PowerPoint games. In C. T. Miller (Ed.), Games: Their purpose and potential in education (pp. 23–42). New York: Springer Publishing Company.

• Rieber, L. P., Davis, J. M., Matzko, M. J., & Grant, M. M. (2009). Children as critics of educational computer games designed by other children. In R. E. Ferdig (Ed.), Handbook of research on effective electronic gaming in education (pp. 1234–1256). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

• Rieber, L. P., Luke, N., & Smith, J. (1998). Project KID DESIGNER: Constructivism at work through play. Meridian: Middle School Computer Technology Journal, 1(1), [On-line]. Available http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/jan98/index.html.

• Rieber, L. P., Barbour, M. K., Thomas, G. B., & Rauscher, D. (2008). Learning by designing games: Homemade PowerPoint games. In C. T. Miller (Ed.), Games: Their purpose and potential in education (pp. 23–42). New York: Springer Publishing.

• Rieber, L. P. (n.d.). Homemade Powerpoint games: A constructionist alternative to webquests. HTML