Respected sir, if your students are running absent minded in the class during the PowerPoint show, then I advise you that you should teach the students in class by activity method.  When you're teaching 'integers', for example, then take the help of colour buttons to represent +tv and -ve numbers, or 'stairs' can be used for operations on 'integers'.  For addition, go up and for subtraction go down, as this activity is very interesting and students take interest.

Globster or Prezi are two other types of presentations that you might be interested in. Hope this helps.

Hi!  I'm a teacher from Russia.  I think that the main problem isn't in your PP presentations.  It's in motivation and involving your students in process of teaching. Your students must work actively during the lessons, solving a lot of problems, both hard and easy ones.  It makes them thinking all the time and they will see that all your presentations aren't only a number of slides with info, but full of smart logic riddles and tasks with some mysteries.  You, as a teacher should find or make up such tasks and exercises for them.  Then I'm sure, the students will visit your studies as it's more interesting to find out facts themselves than to be passive at lessons and they'll consider that they've known new material themselves.  But you, only you, with your tactics and strategy as a teacher will be able to do it.

Sorry for explanations in general, as I don't know exactly your methods of teaching with the help of PP presentation.  If only I knew, I might do it more detailed.

Faithfully,

Irene

I would definitely try out Prezi. It's free and very simple to use. It would be perfect for a classroom bored with PowerPoint. Also Keynote is a nice alternative to PowerPoint if you are a Mac user. 

Prezi.com is very good for being free to use for educators.  The only problem I have with it is there aren't a lot of design options, so your students might get bored with it after a while as well.

The only other thing I would suggest is to get as much interactive activities as possible and as little presentations as possible.  The more the students are talking back and forth with you and discussing with classmates about the topic, the more they pay attention.

We are both students at Kent State Universty and feel Prezi is a lot better though.  Prezi allows you to have complete control over the prsentation, plus it presents the informtation in a fun, non-linear way.  Through our experience we believe the best technology to use in a classroom is the SmartBoard.  The SmartBoard is a touch screen that allows you or your students to complete activities or present information in an interactive way.  It also can be recorded so if some of your students were absent, you could easily present them with the information they missed.  This allows students to not only be presented with the information, but they also get to interact, helping them to retain information more successfully.  Combining your Prezi presentation with the SmartBoard should solve this problem of inattentiveness. 

Thanks,

Morgan and Bo

We would also suggest using Prezi. It is a great presentation tool that creates more interesting presenations. It is very easy to use and its a lot of fun! You can even use SMART board to make the presentations more interactive. Also, if your studnets are presenting stories they have written you can use Storybird. It is an online storybook tool. It allows students to create stories and add graphics to illustrate their work!

Hope this helps!

Jill and Mary

Yodio.com

You can put pictures and narrate very easily- not hard like prezi It is more of a movie- everyone here has switched over to prezi- I still have trouble with it.

Hi there.

I am an English teacher in a primary school. I would like to suggest you to use Windows Movie Maker because it is the easiest way to make a short simple movie for your student. There's another interesting way too...animation...go to goanimated website. I hope you will like it.

Sulmawati

I also wanted to suggest Mouse Mischief. It's fun with little ones as well as teenagers. You can also try Powerbullet to create flash presentations (it''s free) and I sometimes use Camtasia studio to embed a flash quiz into a video.

HI there-

There is this cool program out there for PowerPoint to make it interactive and fun for your students- they actaully enjoy presentations because they become interesting!

http://www.microsoft.com/multipoint/mouse-mischief/en-us/default.aspx

"Mouse Mischief integrates into Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, letting you insert questions, polls, and drawing activity slides into your lessons.

Students can actively participate in these lessons by using their own mice to click, circle, cross out, or draw answers on the screen"

Hope that helps- Good Luck!

Morgan

Hi Adward,

I'd suggest OpenOfficeImpress - it's free for everyone and my students are able to understand and work with it easily.

Hope this helps,

Iris

Stop using Power Point. For around $300. you can purchase an interactive pad with software.  These will allow you operate anywhere in your classroom.  Your students can pass it around and become part of your presentation.  Add some computer speakers to your computer that is operating the projector. and the inteactive pad software will read you presentation out loud. allow you to go to the web class polling or add clickers to interact with the software and pad.   If you want a strong presentation program.  Any of the companies that make interactive boards also make interactive pads that do every thing that the expensive board does with one big advantage.  You do not have to stand next to the board, you stand anywhere in the classroom, and your students do not have to get out of their seats.  Add a $90. wireless keyboard ( must have 30 meter range)  and your classroom will have fully engaged students.  (Qomo and RM Learning) both have good software and interactive pads.

I have 40+ teachers who uses these every day.  (I was going tobuy 10 interactive boards but used the money to give all the teachers an interactive classroom with the pads.)

By the way did you know that a digital document camera can also become a scan card reader for free?

I would also suggest Prezi.  It's easy to use, and no need to go slide to slide.  Transitions are cool.  

Have you considered using some type of interactive tools, where kids can add input to your PPT? I've added YouTube videos as well... that seems to help.

Good luck!

Yes, there is Microsoft producer (movie presentation), photostory 3 and kahootz - all of which children can also develop their work and pictures in as well as videos and I am just learning and going to present with a program online called Prezi.com which is awesome!  Cheers Rob