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Having a fun and interactive way to present information keeps everyone that is involved more engaged in what is happening. For me and many others that means a Jeopardy style game. By having different tools at hand (ahem... such as this PowerPoint Jeopardy... shameless plug...) you, as the teacher, can help your students become more interested in the task at hand and by doing so may help pique their interest in the subject being taught.
Now, on to a couple of the W's.
What exactly is this? This is a PowerPoint presentation that allows you to conduct a Jeopardy style game on a secondary monitor (such as a projector).
Why did you make this, can't you just use one of the many templates that are already out there? This is true. If you do a quick search on the internet you will see that you can find many different templates for a Jeopardy-like game. The problem for me was that I didn't like any of them that are available. It seems that every template that is available is based on using hyperlinks to different slides, which I believe imparts many limitations. The first of which being that the only way you can tell that an answer has selected is that the hyperlink is a different color (usually goes from blue to purple). I show an example of this in picture #2. I also wanted to have a game board in which prize amount would go away if it had previously been selected (see picture #3 for my version). A final requirement that I had was that this would have to be relatively easy to use, setup, and re-use in the future. I didn't want to make something that I would remember how to use come 6 months to a year down the road.
How was this done? This was done utilizing the "Macros" ability of PowerPoint. (Note: this was designed using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 and may or may not work in other versions. Unfortunately I do not have any other versions to test it in, but if you find that you can or can't use it in another version, please leave a note in the comments for everyone!)
In the next steps I am going to explain how I made this presentation/macro. If you would rather skip the explanation and just jump to getting/using the file, please go to the last step.
Now, on to a couple of the W's.
What exactly is this? This is a PowerPoint presentation that allows you to conduct a Jeopardy style game on a secondary monitor (such as a projector).
Why did you make this, can't you just use one of the many templates that are already out there? This is true. If you do a quick search on the internet you will see that you can find many different templates for a Jeopardy-like game. The problem for me was that I didn't like any of them that are available. It seems that every template that is available is based on using hyperlinks to different slides, which I believe imparts many limitations. The first of which being that the only way you can tell that an answer has selected is that the hyperlink is a different color (usually goes from blue to purple). I show an example of this in picture #2. I also wanted to have a game board in which prize amount would go away if it had previously been selected (see picture #3 for my version). A final requirement that I had was that this would have to be relatively easy to use, setup, and re-use in the future. I didn't want to make something that I would remember how to use come 6 months to a year down the road.
How was this done? This was done utilizing the "Macros" ability of PowerPoint. (Note: this was designed using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 and may or may not work in other versions. Unfortunately I do not have any other versions to test it in, but if you find that you can or can't use it in another version, please leave a note in the comments for everyone!)
In the next steps I am going to explain how I made this presentation/macro. If you would rather skip the explanation and just jump to getting/using the file, please go to the last step.
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Signing UpStep 1Creating the Presentation
To begin, we want to make the skin of this game; the PowerPoint presentation itself. As you can see from my screenshot (picture #1) when making the game board the size that I have it (4 rows x 5 columns for answers, with 1 row for category names), you will need a total of 22 slides. The first slide is the game board, the next 20 are the slides for the answers, and I use the final slide for the Final Jeopardy question. Go ahead and insert blank slides ("blank" being the format option for the slides) such that you have a total of 2.
Now lets start on what I like to call the "game board" slide. This will be our first slide in the presentation. Everything that you see in all of the slides is made by inserting "Shapes." To do so, go to your "Insert" tab along the top of the screen and click "Shapes." Throughout the whole presentation I've only used the rectangular shape, but feel free to use any that you like. The most important thing at this point is to write down the order and placement of shape that you add. Why this is important is because the program internally names each shape in the order that they are created on each slide. For example: If on the first slide you insert a shape (and this is the first shape that you have added) this shape's "name" in the program is now Slide(1).Shape(1). If you add an additional shape, this next one will be named Slide(1).Shape(2) and so on. We need to know each shape's "name" so that we can make changes to it in the future.
For my game board slide the first row of answers are shapes 1-5, the second row of answers are shapes 6-10, the third row of answers are shapes 11-15, the forth row of answers are shapes 16-20, and my category row are shapes 21-25. This can be seen on picture #2. Now go ahead and make your game board using shapes.
For aesthetics you can change things such as the font, font color, font size, shape fill, and shape border color (I also recommend centering the text in each shape) .
Next go to the second slide in your presentation. For this we want to add two shapes. Shape number one should be the near the top to act as a title for that slide. Shape number two will be where you can type answers. An example of mine is in picture #3. For the shapes on my answer slides I removed the outline and made the shape fill the same color as my background so that there is no appearance of shapes being on the slides.
After you have finished adding the shapes to this slide you can change the aesthetics for the shapes like you did on the game board.
Now, on the left hand side of the screen you should see the two slides that you have made. Right-click on the answer slide you just finished and select "Copy." You are now going to right-click below the answer slide and select "Paste." You want to repeat this such that you have 21 answer slides for a grand total of 22 slides.
In the last slide, go ahead and change the text in the title to "Final Jeopardy."
Congratulations! The slides portion of this project is now finished!
Now lets start on what I like to call the "game board" slide. This will be our first slide in the presentation. Everything that you see in all of the slides is made by inserting "Shapes." To do so, go to your "Insert" tab along the top of the screen and click "Shapes." Throughout the whole presentation I've only used the rectangular shape, but feel free to use any that you like. The most important thing at this point is to write down the order and placement of shape that you add. Why this is important is because the program internally names each shape in the order that they are created on each slide. For example: If on the first slide you insert a shape (and this is the first shape that you have added) this shape's "name" in the program is now Slide(1).Shape(1). If you add an additional shape, this next one will be named Slide(1).Shape(2) and so on. We need to know each shape's "name" so that we can make changes to it in the future.
For my game board slide the first row of answers are shapes 1-5, the second row of answers are shapes 6-10, the third row of answers are shapes 11-15, the forth row of answers are shapes 16-20, and my category row are shapes 21-25. This can be seen on picture #2. Now go ahead and make your game board using shapes.
For aesthetics you can change things such as the font, font color, font size, shape fill, and shape border color (I also recommend centering the text in each shape) .
Next go to the second slide in your presentation. For this we want to add two shapes. Shape number one should be the near the top to act as a title for that slide. Shape number two will be where you can type answers. An example of mine is in picture #3. For the shapes on my answer slides I removed the outline and made the shape fill the same color as my background so that there is no appearance of shapes being on the slides.
After you have finished adding the shapes to this slide you can change the aesthetics for the shapes like you did on the game board.
Now, on the left hand side of the screen you should see the two slides that you have made. Right-click on the answer slide you just finished and select "Copy." You are now going to right-click below the answer slide and select "Paste." You want to repeat this such that you have 21 answer slides for a grand total of 22 slides.
In the last slide, go ahead and change the text in the title to "Final Jeopardy."
Congratulations! The slides portion of this project is now finished!
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It definitely beats the ol' hyperlink method.