Three PowerPoint Power-Ups

One of the first few things that teachers start to do when making an effort to use technology in the classroom is to give their lectures on PowerPoint.  The main advantage of this, from my point of view, is that you have a digital copy of your lecture notes that you can change and update very easily, and even distribute to students.  The next step after that might even be to have your students make PowerPoint presentations themselves.  Here are 3 helpful PowerPoint tips:

1. PowerPoint Presentation Checklist (by my friend Mr. Carl Haley) – You can follow this yourself or, even better, provide it to students as a guide for giving good presentations.
2. PowerPoint Templates (free directly from Microsoft) – When the default templates get boring, jazz up your presentations with over 150 free slide templates.  Check out a video of them in action.  Note: these templates are only for PowerPoint 2007.
3. PowerPoint Jeopardy Template – This is the simplest (easiest to edit) template that I found that still maintains that true Jeopardy look & feel.  If you know of a better one, let me know in the comments!