Microsoft pptPlex for PowerPoint

Well, if it’s good enough for Bill Gates, it’s good enough for me. If you watch the four and a half minute video of Bill Gates demonstrating the Touch Wall technology you will have a good idea of where pptPlex can take you. Mind you, I wouldn’t be turning my back on the students like that, but I have found the mouse and keyboard have excellent zoom capabilities and it frees you up immensely if you use them. I guess a laser pointer would work too but I don’t know for sure. In my opinion it is a perfect tool for teaching because you can zoom in on particular areas of your presentation. You can zoom out again so that you keep your students in the picture all the time. I installed it free from the Microsoft Labs site and the little videos on this site are helpful in explaining some things to get you going. pptPlex installs in the ribbon at the top of PowerPoint 2007. They are making a version for Office 2010 and that pleases me enormously because they said the project had finished. Can’t think why because the capacity to develop and utilise pptPlex in education is unlimited, really. PowerPoint and KeyNote can be good teaching tools but you have to get good at slide presentations. It doesn’t mean complicated but it does mean you have to be able to change the look and process. Although, a text book has always been a text book. Slide shows, in many ways, could be the e-learning text book. You can make them as simple or as sophisticated as you like as SlideShare.net demonstrates so well.

pptPlex canvas

I have made more than one pptPlex file and it was obvious to me as I was working on the files that it was a really good way of organising my thoughts. When you use slide software you often don’t think it out in an exacting manner because there is no obvious way to do that. With the canvas and the dividers you get the headings for the slide sequences and then you look at the logical presentation of material. You can also prioritise the material. pptPlex doesn’t have the capability to put in hyperlinks and animations. The animations are probably wisely left out as they tend to get over used, but hyperlinks in 2010? You have to be kidding me. I haven’t been able to get a video to work. I can in PowerPoint, and I can put the box in the slide and it looks like it will work…but it hasn’t yet. I’ll get to the bottom of it. I was really disappointed to find out I can’t use pptPlex with my Apple Office 2008. I have been on various Mac sites and Mac Office sites and Microsoft Office Mac support, but no, there is no Mac Office version. Tragic. I have emailed people who might be able to help and I do so hope Microsoft will resurrect its pptPlex team because this is a fantastic programme and we need it to work with all versions of Office. There are so many good reviews on the Net about pptPlex and we have the whiteboards… just show us the software!!