I was asked by a teacher today about putting a timer in a Power Point Presentation. She displays her daily agenda and objectives on Power Point for every class that day. She had a generic Power Point for the week. She wanted to use the timer to track kids while they go to the bathroom or work on a quiz or an assignment.
I tried the usual suggestions I found on the web by adding text boxes and animation and have multiple slides. That is not what I was wanting though. I was wanting to add a timer within a slide, not make a timer out of Power Point.
Then I realized it was all in how you search. I went from "insert" to "embed" and found what I needed. I found a Shockwave Flash Timer file from the following website. I downloaded the file and saved it on my computer. The next step was embedding it into Power Point.
As hard as it was for me, I went to the "Help" icon and searched "Embedding Flash" and found the information I needed. I was able to embed the timer on Power Point 2007. I then sent it to the teacher and made the necessary changes on her 2003 version of Power Point.
Creating the Flash timer required my first use of Visual Basic. I also created my first video tutorial explaining how to embed a Shockwave Flash Timer into Power Point. I did not record my voice though because I did not have a mic handy. Hope you find this little trick helpful and useful in your classroom.
