Regular readers of this blog will know that one of my current interests is using twitter as a live in-class voting tool (TwEVS). Today, via Jane Hart, I was made aware of ‘Free PowerPoint Twitter Tools’ developed by Timo Elliott.
Timo’s solution not only integrates voting within a PowerPoint presentation, but he has some other nice features including a real-time twitter ticker-tap and a feedback wall which pulls questions and response from twitter (shown below).
Using these tools is very easy and all you need to do is download the PowerPoint .ppt file with embedded tools and instructions from Timo’s site (unfortunately PowerPoint for Mac isn’t support yet).
The technology behind this solution is simple Adobe Flash which was developed using SAP BusinessObjects Dashboarding product, Xcelsius (don’t worry all you need to use this solution is PowerPoint and Adobe Flash Player). Initially the PowerPoint file didn’t work for me but thanks to a suggestion from Timo it was traced to a problem with my Flash Player installation. If you experience problems I would suggest following the uninstall/install instructions provided by Adobe.
When I presented my solution using twitter and yahoo pipes for voting last week I would say most of the interest was in combining in-class and out-of-class activity. Timo’s solution potential fits in well with this giving an easy way to use voting as well as a the feedback wall which could be used at any point during a presentation to stimulate dialogue.
Join the conversation
Comments are closed.
David Muir
Brilliant. It looks very slick… but I still like your hand built solution.
David Muir
… Apart from anything else, your solution can cope with more than 100 votes!
Martin Hawksey
@David – you’re too kind 🙂 The feedback wall looks really interesting.
As you point out on your own blog still a big question about using personal devices in the classroom (less of an issue in HE, but still an issue)
Timo Elliott
Martin,
Many thanks for the mention. All feedback about what it should do better is gratefully received. I’m currently updating the voting to include more instructions, show percentages rather than values, and allow people to vote “quietly” by using @votebytweet at the start, rather than everybody’s followers having to see all the votes… Thanks for the Adobe link — I’ll add it to the new troubleshooting section…
Twitter PPT Integration « eLearning Safari
[…] on a small amount of central kit (aka PRS Clickers). I feel an experiment coming on inspired by http://mashe.hawksey.info/2009/10/integrating-twitter-voting-into-powerpoint/ Advertisement GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]