This resource is a contribution from Karen Schweitzer, a freelance writer and copy editor who is the Business School Guide for About.com. 15 Slide Show Tools for Teachers is an article that links to a selection of useful (and free) sites that can be used to create, present, and publish slide shows. Bonus: Links to three more sites with free resources!

There is a wonderful timesaver hiding in the Edit menu of HyperStudio 5®. It’s the Group Card option under Ready Made Cards.
Image©2009 ABS Screen shot of HS5 Edit and Ready Made Cards menus showing Group Card option
Once you understand how Group Cards work and how to create them, you can make a stack much faster, come out with a much smaller file, have the layout on each card automatically match, and have a way to change settings in objects on all the cards in the stack at once. Bonus: PDF Quick Guide!

Multi-Choice Test Templates includes Microsoft Word®, Clicker 5® and Classroom Suite® versions of templates I have developed to create the tests that become part of the activity sets here in the Attic. They are the result of much trial and error, and in their present form, they save me a great deal of time. So it’s time to make them available to you as well

Are scrollbars showing up in Clicker 5® activities you download from the Attic? Got students who cannot access them and get to all the text? Do some text boxes have text that is out of sight? Here is how to make the scrollbars go away and get all the text to show! Bonus: PDF version of this tip to download!

Remember those wonderful Lincoln logs we played with? Here’s a chance to build a virtual log cabin. When it’s finished, students use the magic of their imaginations to go inside and see the furnishings of a real cabin. There’s a surprise when they look out the window and see a bear looking in! Bonus: Log Cabin Clip Art collection to download!

Digital cameras, graphic editing applications, and multimedia applications are natural partners. But with so many choices for graphics formats, resolutions, display size, and print out size, it can be very confusing! The tips in Pixels and MegaPixels, Oh My! will hopefully make it a little easier to get those graphics into a project. Bonus: Example Photos and tutorial!

Classic activities in Classroom Suite have a button with a speech balloon. Clicking this button gives the student audible instructions or directions about the assignment. It would be even better to have the instructions visible as well as audible. Here’s how! Bonus: PDF you can use as a handout for presentations.

Ten Trucks uses photos and a “red fish, blue fish” style vocabulary to engage beginning readers and help them work with adjectives. There are all kinds of truck photos, ending with a very cool custom painted truck. Students use errorless and guided writing activities to work with adjectives. In the highest level writing activity, My Cool Trucks, students custom-paint their own cool truck images and write about them. Bonus: Lots of truck photos and clip art to download!

The Let’s Make A Wreath book gives students a chance to choose decorations for a wreath, then see what the completed wreath looks like lighted and hanging up. I went crazy on this one, with three choices of bow (gold, white, red), three choices of plant trimmings (pine cones, holly, poinsettias), and three novelty decorations to choose from (candy canes, gold stars, snowflakes). If you remember your math, that’s 27 possible wreaths! Bonus: ALL the art for download!

Text-To-Speech is a powerful computer option, particularly valuable for struggling readers and students with visual issues. Once and while though, you’ll hear a word pronounced incorrectly, most often if it’s a proper name or a technical term. You can correct the pronunciation of a word in Clicker 5®, IntelliTools Classroom Suite®, and My Own Bookshelf®. Detailed instructions and screenshots for all three!