Creating a Menu Slide
Powerpoint is wonderful to start with…and then just like the M25…it doesn’t seem to end soon enough.
Lessons can be adapted to go in all sorts of directions depending on the students ideas, thoughts and interests. So instead of running from slides 1 to 127 during your lesson, you can chose which part of the powerpoint you want to go to by designing a Menu slide at the start. Powerpoint can be designed to accommodate this type of freedom and so add to the informality of your lesson structure.
- Create a slide with a picture relevant to the topic you are covering. The picture should be expanded so that it covers the whole slide.
- Then add hotspots or action buttons to the slide which link to different parts of your presentation.
- Produce an Action Button, (from the drawing tool bar), which always links back to the ‘Menu Slide’.
- Copy this Action Button to every slide in your presentation.
Resources:
- Computer Linked to Projector
- Powerpoint
Benefits:
- A Menu slide stops your lesson being contrained into a linear Powerpoint presentation.
- You can dip into topics, notes and web links as you need them during the lesson.
- You have more control over the direction of the lesson.
- A good visual on the Menu Slide provides a focal point for the students to remember that lesson by. Present them with that ‘visual’ week by week and asking them to recall the learning that took place. In time, a collection of those ‘visuals’ will help them generate their own revision notes.
- If you are updating your lesson, you can simply append the new notes to the end of the presentation and add a new menu option to your Menu slide. There is usually no need to completely reogranise your whole presentation.