A novel way to break the ice. Create and play a multiple-mouse lesson to help break down barriers among your students and build community right from the first day. You can make slides with every student’s name and photo on them, and insert multiple-mouse slides with questions about the class that students will have fun answering on the screen. 

·         You can use multiple-choice slides, for example, to ask them to take a quick look around the room and then estimate data about their new classmates. One slide might ask the question, We have 36 students in our class this year. How many boys and how many girls are there? Once everyone has clicked an answer, the correct numbers will appear in the Results pane. It’s good practice for their observation and estimating skills as well. 

·         You can also insert polling slides that can help everyone get to know the group. For example, you can ask, What is your favorite sport? or What musical instrument do you play?  Once they’ve clicked one of the answers on the screen, the Results pane displays which sport or instrument is the most popular overall and which ones only one or two students play. The students who clicked the last answer, “Other,” then have an opportunity to tell everyone what they play.    

·         You can use Yes/N o slides to find out how many students speak a second or third language, have lived in another country or another state or province, own pets, and so on.

·         Find out how they spent their time during the summer while giving them a chance to practice their estimating and percentage skills. Create a drawing slide with four large circles under the question and instruction, How did you spend your summer days? Draw lines in the circle to show what percentage of the pie/circle you spent each day doing: 1) outdoor activities, 2) household chores, 3) reading and/or summer classes, and 4) TV, movies, and video games. Each student can draw his or her own pie chart and get a visual sense of how they spent their time.   

You can ask any kind of question on the clickable slides, anything to help loosen the class up and elicit information that will help them get to know each other. The students will enjoy clicking and drawing their answers, and they’ll learn a lot about their new class. The novelty of being able to answer at the same time with their mice might even generate a very positive first-day-of school experience.

Get parents involved on Back-to-School Night. Give a Mouse Mischief presentation to parents to actively engage them as you introduce yourself and your plan for the year’s learning. Surprise them with a little fun and get them laughing. Hand them each a mouse and then use a Yes/No multiple-mouse slide to find out how much they know about what students in their child’s grade level are already expected to know and what they are supposed to learn in the coming year. The answers could be very interesting! You can follow this up with an overview of the units you’ll be teaching during the year. Use polling slides to find out which continents they were born on, which languages they speak—to give them a sense of your class’s diversity. You can also use polling slides to find out what they think is the most important thing their child should learn during the year, and then incorporate their answers into a description of your teaching philosophy. Besides actively engaging parents, using Mouse Mischief instead of an ordinary PowerPoint or other presentation is a great way to introduce them to the new tool you’ll be incorporating in their child’s learning. That way they’ll have a feel for Mouse Mischief when their child comes home talking about it.

Review material your students covered last year and assess where they are. Mouse Mischief is a great way to help your students review material they covered the previous year, so that they’ll be prepared for the new material you’ll be teaching. Multiple-mouse lessons are also very useful to assess the skill level of your students, individually and as a class. Their answers on the screen give you immediate feedback about what they know and don’t know, and what the class distribution is in a particular subject. For example, if the answers they click show that the majority doesn’t fully understand fractions, you can start the year off with a more intense review of fractions. Using multiple-mouse slides to ask them questions for review or formative assessment is a non-threatening and enjoyable way to find out what you need to know about your students at the beginning of the year so you can respond better to their needs. 

Explore other ways to use Mouse Mischief lessons to ease into the new school year, and don’t forget to share your ideas with the teaching community.

www.microsoft.com/mousemischief

"As tens of thousands of Colorado kids prepare to head back to the classroom, educators are preparing their curriculum. Our world becomes more digitally connected and teachers are adjusting their lesson plans to keep students engaged and prepare them for the future. Experts say major technology evolves every 18 months and when it comes to the classroom teachers have to be able to keep up. Today, Microsoft has launched new software tools for the classroom that will help kids learn using what their comfortable with... technology."

Lessons with multiple-mouse slides are engaging and fun for students, and they can be used in many different ways to complement your teaching approach and style. You can use them to:

·         Introduce new material in a fun, non-threatening way

·         Get instant feedback during a lesson on how well the class understands the concepts or procedures you are teaching

·         Review material before a test

·         Vary your presentation of material to hold students’ interest

·         Help students who learn in different ways (such as tactile or haptic learners) grasp content

·         Poll your students about issues

·         Discover what your students’ assumptions and myths about a subject are before you begin a unit

·         Give even your shiest students a chance to participate from the safety of their own desk

Introducing the Mouse Mischief Quick Start Guide

It’s easy to create multiple-mouse slides and to set up your classroom to play multiple-mouse lessons.  And now, with the Quick Start Guide, it’s even easier. The Quick Start Guide provides step-by-step instructions for users who are new to Mouse Mischief, but who are already familiar with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 or Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007. If you already rely on PowerPoint in your teaching—and chances are, you do—and you want to learn how to use Mouse Mischief to bring those PowerPoint lessons alive, the Quick Start Guide is for you!  It covers everything you need—from exploring the Multiple Mouse tab, to creating and inserting different kinds of multiple-mouse slides, to launching a Mouse Mischief lessons, to guiding students how best to interact with the slides, to playing a lesson in individual and in team mode.

Download the Quick Start Guide.

Of course, you can always visit the Mouse Mischief website, which has all the system requirements and hardware information you need and more instructions, too, complete with videos. 

The possibilities are only beginning to be realized for this new education tool. Join teachers already experimenting with it and reaping the benefits in their classrooms. Try Mouse Mischief and see what you and your students can do with it!

It takes time, energy, and creativity to create high quality lessons and keep our students engaged in learning. Even the best teachers can’t do it all by themselves. We need to draw on our community for support, feedback, encouragement, inspiration, and new ideas, approaches, and tools—not to mention lesson plans and lessons. You might say, It takes a village to teach our students as well as they deserve to be taught. That’s why it’s so important to share with other teachers the Mouse Mischief lessons you create and use successfully with your students. If you submit your multiple-mouse lessons to the Office.com site, other teachers can download them and use them or adapt them to suit their students. That saves valuable time. Being able to use your Spanish lesson on words for colors, for example, enables other teachers to spend their time creating Spanish lessons on body parts or directions, lessons that you can then use with your students.

But there’s a greater benefit. When you submit your multiple-mouse lessons, you’re helping other teachers learn new ways to use Mouse Mischief that they might not have come up with otherwise. For example, maybe you have a knack for using polling slides in your lessons, or you’ve developed a fun game in a math or grammar lesson using only yes/no slides, or you’ve found a way to teach poetry or physics using drawing slides. Others can use your lessons, sure, but they can also take your concept and apply it to lessons they create on other subjects or content. 

Whether you’re a brand new teacher or a veteran teacher, your ideas and lessons can help others save time and become better teachers. Make a contribution to the Mouse Mischief creative educationalcommunity—upload a multiple-mouse lesson.

Before you upload

Before you upload your lesson, take a minute to make sure that it meets all the Office.com template requirements:

·         Created in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 or 2007

·         Less than 10MB in size.

·         Does not contain any personal information or objectionable content

·         Contains only images and text that you own or have permission to use

Also, to help others find and use what you’ve shared, consider these questions and recommendations:

·         Is this lesson significantly different from other lessons available on the site?

·         Is the title clear and descriptive? Giving your lesson a succinct title that points clearly to the content will help other teachers find it faster.

·         Write a brief description or summary of the lesson. This is not required for submission, but it will help others determine quickly whether your lesson is appropriate and relevant to their teaching needs—without having to download the entire lesson to preview it.

How to upload your Mouse Mischief lessons

1.       Go to the Microsoft Office Online templates page.

2.       On the Templates page, click   in the bottom right corner, or click the Submit a template link under Community Resources. The Windows Live Sign-in page appears.

3.       Sign in with your Windows Live ID. The Registration page appears.

Note  If you don’t have a Windows Live ID, you can create one by clicking the Sign up button on the Registration page.

4.       On the Registration page, in the Choose Display Name box, type the name you want displayed by the content you submit. Make sure that the checkbox is selected next to Office.com may contact me at youremailaddress@youremailprovider about the content I submit.  Click Submit. The Template Submission Form page appears.

5.       In the Template Submission Form, click the Browse button and navigate to the multiple-mouse lesson on our computer that you want to upload. Double-click the file.

Note  Make sure that the file you want to upload meets all the file limitations noted on the page. For example, it must be a PowerPoint 2010 or 2007 file that is not larger than 10 MB. 

6.       The file name of your lesson will automatically be entered as the title for your lesson. If you want to change the title, you can type a new title in the Enter a title box.  You can also type a description in the Enter a description box.  A description is not necessary, but adding one is recommended, because it will help other teachers decided more quickly if your lesson is appropriate for their classes or not.

7.       In the Select categories box, click the choose manually (advanced) link. In the Manual category entry box, scroll to the Presentations heading, and then click Multiple-Mouse presentations.

8.       Click Submit. A Thank You screen will appear, where you can easily submit more lessons if you wish. Your lesson will be reviewed and Office online will contact you via your Windows Live email address about whether it has been accepted and posted on the site. 

Mouse Mischief was featured in interactive demos and hands-on learning classroom activities. The initial response to the technology was overwhelmingly positive. Many of the participants and visitors were excited to learn about this affordable technology that can increase engagement and interactivity in the classroom by using familiar technology (PowerPoint 2010 or PowerPoint 2007) and familiar hardware (computer mice). While visiting the booth, many teachers and administrators mentioned how eager they were to start using Mouse Mischief in their classrooms and to deploy it in their districts.

We were very happy to give away branded Mouse Mischief hubs, USB sticks, and “free tools for teachers in the classroom” CDs—a collection of resources from Microsoft to help engage students. We sincerely thank everyone who visited the Microsoft booth. Special thanks to our partner, ePals, for hosting a daily raffle, and congratulations to Mouse Mischief Starter Kit winners. We were delighted to see Mouse Mischief being featured by a group of former teachers from Teach us Technology. In their own words, “We love Mouse Mischief …it is so easy to use!”

If you missed us at the conference, join our Mouse Mischief community to stay current with Mouse Mischief.

-Gladys Kenfack & The Mouse Mischief Team

One immediate benefit of using Mouse Mischief in your homeschool is that it gives you access to 25 free lessons in math, language, science, and ESL that you can play with your kids. You can also check the Mouse Mischief community for more lessons that others have shared—just sign in with your Windows Live ID to access the list, which is continually being updated. You can use these ready-made Mouse Mischief lessons to teach basic concepts, review material you’ve already covered, or supplement other curricular materials you’re using. Kids will enjoy interacting with the material in a new way and look forward to lessons. 
 
Another advantage is that with Mouse Mischief you can tailor lessons to your child’s way of learning and to their progress in a particular subject. Say your child is having a hard time understanding angles. You’ve been over the material provided in your curriculum, but they’re still not grasping it. You can create a Mouse Mischief lesson that presents the material in a new way and uses multiple-mouse slides to make sure they understand each step before moving on to the next one. You can create yes/no and multiple-choice slides they can click answers on, for example. The results pane shows them immediately if they got it right. If they didn’t, you can go over the material again. Maybe your child is a tactile or kinesthetic learner who pays better attention when his or her hands are moving. For them, you can create drawing slides that give them practice completing angles or drawing new angles on their own.

The beauty of Mouse Mischief is that anyone can create custom lessons about any subject with it. Want to teach your child about something you can’t find any satisfactory curricular materials for? Create your own Mouse Mischief lesson, using words and concepts you know your child already understands. Is your child more a visual than a verbal learner? Use photos, images, and color schemes that are familiar or especially meaningful or attractive to your child when you create the instructional and multiple-mouse slides.

You and your child can create multiple-mouse lessons together, too. Talking with your child about how to present different kinds of material, what questions to ask about the material, and what kind of slides to use to ask those questions can be a valuable part of the learning process. And the two of you will be collaborating—always a good way to invite new learning and sidestep some of the authority issues that can surface when you homeschool.

Encourage your child’s creativity and responsibility by asking them to create his or her own Mouse Mischief lesson. They can create lessons as a way to demonstrate what they’ve learned or to introduce materials they’ve covered to younger siblings or other students. If they’re curious about something, dinosaurs or black holes or women scientists, have them research the topic on the web and create a Mouse Mischief lesson that teaches others what they learned and engages them by asking fun educational questions. Teaching is one of the most effective ways to learn.

Submit the lessons you’ve created to the Mouse Mischief community to share with others, so the fund of resources keeps growing. Just click Submit a template on the Office.com templates page, enter your Windows Live ID, and follow the instructions for uploading your contribution. 

For more ideas for ways to use Mouse Mischief to keep your homeschoolers engaged in their work and teach them effectively, check out the Mouse Mischief Community discussion, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter.

Try adding Mouse Mischief to your homeschooling toolkit. You’ll be surprised at how rewarding and how much fun clicking with your kids during lessons can be.   

I first started using an early version of Microsoft Mouse Mischief when it was introduced to me last year during an AsiaPac Microsoft Partner-in-Learning workshop. It was called ‘Multi Mouse” then, if I remember correctly.  My first impression was that it is more suited for Primary school pupils because of its interface and it was somewhat ‘childish’ looking. However, I like the fact that it gives every child a ‘voice’ in the classroom and really increases the interaction between the teacher and pupils.

In the beginning of this year, I was wondering how I could set up a low-cost Students’ or Classroom Performance System (some called it Clickers). I was thrilled to stumble upon the Mouse Mischief beta version and the fact that it was developed as a free-of-charge downloadable add-in for PowerPoint 2010 and PowerPoint 2007. It cannot be compared with Clickers, which has much more functionality than Mouse Mischief. Mouse Mischief, however, provides the basic function of real-time polling and gives all the pupils the opportunity to participate in the activity. That met my objectives for the following reasons. First, Mouse Mischief being free-of-charge reduces the hassle for me to prepare a technology plan to request funding. Second, as an add-in to PowerPoint the learning curve is greatly reduced because I think educators are so familiar with using PowerPoint that the functions become very intuitive. Third, regarding hardware, the school has many mice lying around after condemnation of old PCs so that they can be recycled for use. This helps reduce even more cost! I had some problems with the beta version crashing on me at least one time in my lesson, but I still use it as I saw its potential to really engage the class by using an interactive lesson!

I am a Physics teacher and I use Mouse Mischief for misconception analysis. I came out with True/False and multiple choice questions on some common misconceptions about Physics concepts. I also collected common mistakes or misconceptions from the daily work or assessment and turn them into True/False or multiple choice questions. This really helps address the common mistakes made by my pupils. I also use Mouse Mischief for daily lessons. I copy-n-paste my lesson slides into a Mouse Mischief template and use the slides to check for understanding after a section in my lesson. Mouse Mischief has given me the opportunity to identify and clarify some simple things that I assume my pupils know. However, the real-time polling results show otherwise! In addition, the timer in Mouse Mischief adds a competitive element in the lesson and my pupils love it! Some challenge themselves to be quick and accurate in their answers. I still remember the first time I used Mouse Mischief in the classroom—it made the whole class really excited and I could see they had fun also!

One of the ‘disadvantage’ of Mouse Mischief is that everyone can see all the mouse pointers. Therefore, there can be a copy situation where some pupils would wait-and-see to select the more popular option. But frankly speaking, I am not bothered about this. I usually adopt the collaborative strategy of Think-Pair-Share. Each pupil has a partner and they are supposed to discuss the answer first before they make their choice. For the academically weak pupils, I would pair them up with those who are academically stronger to provide peer guidance.

One problem I face is connecting all the wireless mice. The wireless (Hovono) mice I bought seem to have generic nano receivers. Sync’ing one mouse to the receiver may disconnect another mouse. So, I have to spend some time to get all mice connected, use more wired mice instead, or I simply get pupils to bring their own wireless mice! Hey, if you want to reduce cost further!

Take note of this if you are buying wireless mice: they should be 24 GHz, must have long range and preferably include a nano receiver for ease of storage and ‘clean’ look. If you are connecting more mice, an AC powered hub is recommended; although, I have survived 2 × 10 ports USB hubs and 1 × 7 port USB hub—all USB powered at the same time!

Here is my setup:

- Fujitsu laptop running the Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) operating system
- The 2007 Office  system
- 2 × 10-ports USB hub (USB powered)
- 1 × 7-ports USB hub (USB powered)
- 14 wired mice
- 8 wireless mice
- some USB extension cables for wired mice
 

I have done a survey about which is the most effective ICT tools (blog, forum, Twitter, MSN, Microsoft Live@Edu, GoogleDocs etc.) used by me in my lessons and these are some of my students’ feedback:
 

“The Mouse Mischief pollingz, definitely. It’s the most engaging and interactive tool as it gives a competitive feel, or rather, a thrill with a group, instead of working solo. Working in a group is something that interests youths a lot. It’s a tool which is fun and educational and very effective in correcting fellow classmates misconceptions. Especially for myself.” – Lim Junhao
 

“I felt that the Mouse Mischief add-in to PowerPoint was the most effective. It aids us in getting rid of our misconceptions in the chapters we have learnt, ensuring that we will not repeat the same mistake in our exams. The class is also separated into groups, so there was a lot of interaction involved too. In groups, we were able to share our ideas and debate on what we have thought all along about the chapters we have learnt, thus allowing us to gain new insights on what we have thought previously.” – Ng Kim Li
 

“I felt that Mouse Mischief is the most effective tool for my learning. The main reason is because by using this, I am able to clear all of my misconceptions of a certain topic in a particular subject. This helps to further improve my understanding of the foundations before going deeper into the topic. It aids my learning as it explains the main points and thus, helps to form a solid understanding.” – Rashid Bin Ahmad Yusoff
 

“I think that Mouse Mischief is most effective for my learning. As other than just learning, it serves as a very good way to recap our knowledge and to test our understanding by setting up some trick question. Also, it is in the form of a game, so I will be more interested. Lastly, after each question, it shows us the results of who got it right or wrong and hence, it enables us to look out for areas we might have misconceptions on.” – Amelia Lim
 

“I think that Mouse Mischief is most effective for my learning. It helps us to test our understanding of the different topics and corrects common misconceptions so that we will take note of them and will not make the same mistakes again. It is more fun than having class tests. Our mistakes are also addressed straight after everyone answers the question while the question is still fresh in our minds.” – Tan Sheau Shiun
 

“I feel that  Mouse Mischief is most effective for my learning.. Mouse Mischief tests us on our concepts of Physics, and allows us to clear our misconceptions on any specific topic. Should most of us answer a certain question incorrectly; Mr. Tan would then help us clear our doubts by going into details about the topic the question was derived from. It is more effective as we would be able to clear our misconceptions immediately. Mouse Mischief is also in the form of a game, hence, we would be trained to think faster so as to be the first to answer the question swiftly and correctly.” – Chew Yi Ting
 

So, I hope you guys give Mouse Mischief a try and start giving every child a mouse today! 

Cheers,

Alvin Tan
Ngee Ann Secondary School, Singapore

In 2003 the School of the Future became the first paperless school.  A joint project of the School District of Philadelphia and Microsoft, the School of the Future was created to help integrate technology in the classroom and help the environment. To avoid waste and save trees, students used only computers, and all books, tests, grade tracking, reports, and communications were done online. Eminence Middle School in Kentucky followed suit in 2005 and started its own paperless classroom experiment with Windows CE and PDAs.

Today, their vision of going green in education is catching on. Teachers, administrators, and students are coming up with new ways to go paperless all the time, from online admissions to class websites to making videos for book reports and “papers” to e-books, e-notebooks, and e-portfolios.

One new way to go green by teaching paperless is to use Mouse Mischief. Here are just a few ways that Mouse Mischief lessons can save paper (and pencils)—not to mention time and money. 

·         By creating your own multiple-mouse lessons on your computer, you won’t be as dependent on textbooks for teaching essential content. And there’s a bonus—playing Mouse Mischief lessons on a screen for the class means every student can see and learn the content; no more sharing of textbooks in overcrowded classrooms, no more excuses of lost or forgotten textbooks!

·         Remember those piles of mimeographed or Xeroxed worksheets? With Mouse Mischief, worksheets are ancient artifacts. Now, instead of handing each student his or her own worksheet, you can project a single yes/no, multiple-choice, or drawing slide on a screen where they can all work simultaneously using their mice. Bonus—no more taking time to make sure you have enough worksheets and more time in class to hand them out. You can go right from your lesson to the multiple-mouse screen you want them to work on.

·         When you use Mouse Mischief, you eliminate pencils and all their problems–not sharpened, broken, eraserless, lost, smudges everywhere. Using mice to click or draw answers is cleaner and more efficient, as well as a good way to save trees.

·         Mouse Mischief can be used for formative assessment, to help you gauge how your students are learning and see if you need to adjust your lesson. That means you don’t have to hand out and collect paper pop quizzes anymore to get a reading on how the class is doing with the material. You can insert multiple-mouse slides in your lessons instead. Bonus—you get immediate feedback, instead of having to stay after school or stay up late to mark those paper quizzes, and you’ll never lose a student’s quiz transporting them between school and home.

·         Explore paperless alternatives to traditional paper student reports. Instead of assigning a book report or paper, why not ask individuals or student teams to create a Mouse Mischief lesson to demonstrate their mastery of certain material? They can demonstrate that they know a certain topic and use the multiple-mouse slides to engage their peers and practice being teachers themselves. You can collect their lessons on a student website for other students to use to learn or review material.

It’s probably not possible to go entirely paperless in the classroom, as Allen H. Kupetz concludes in “Is the Paperless Classroom Possible?”, but you can go almost paperless and the advantages of doing so are tremendous. It saves money as well as the environment, it enables you to put together your own unique set of teaching resources, and it makes it easier to adjust lesson contents to meet your students where they are.  Mouse Mischief can help you go green in your classroom—all while keeping the fun in learning. 

To find or share more ideas on how to teach paperless, join the Partners in Learning community or read this blog. 

I recently polled our Facebook followers about how they spend their summer: “What do most teachers do during the summer months?” The answers were incredibly varied and surprising. For example, one teacher wrote, “I take classes, revise lesson plans and try to recover from the emotional drain of the school year.” Which got me thinking: when do you usually begin thinking about tackling your plans for the next year? I'd love to hear from you.

-Eric Burgess, Community Manager

 Photo by Ivy Dawned.

Haptic or tactile learners do well with "hands on" activities. They like to be moving—doing artwork, for example, or doodling or tracing words and pictures—and they succeed when they’re given tasks requiring manipulation. When touch is combined with other senses, especially sight, it increases the amount of information sent to the brain. Direct, “hands on” involvement helps students grasp concepts and internalize them. By drawing on multiple-mouse slides, for example, they can get a “feel” for the information you’re teaching. When you add drawing activities to a lesson, therefore, you can help students process information, integrate it, and retain it better.

Experts recommend varying the mode of learning approximately every 20 minutes. Incorporating drawing slides into your Mouse Mischief lessons is an easy way to follow this guideline. 

Ideas for incorporating drawing slides in multiple-mouse lessons

Complete, trace, or draw objects. One easy way to include haptic learning is to include drawing slides on which students can complete partially drawn objects, trace complete objects (like polygons), or draw objects to get a feel for them. These two slides, from the sample lesson Mouse Mischief Angles, combine different uses of drawing slides to give students lots of opportunity to get the concept of different angles firmly “in hand.”
 ----------

----------          

The following example from the sample lesson Words for Weather demonstrates how using a drawing activity can help reinforce word associations and ideas, for ESL students or all students. 

Draw processes, relationships, or concepts. Drawing slides can be a big help when you want to give students active ways to grasp and integrate complex concepts or relationships and to think through relationships haptically. On this slide, for example, taken from the sample lesson Mouse Mischief Tides, students can feel how the tides and moon are related and show what they have learned about tides by drawing their understanding of the relationship.

When you teach the Age of Discovery, wouldn’t it be nice to give your students practice drawing the route the Vasco de Gama took on his first trip to India? This helps them locate spatially the European and Indian continents and understand the relationship between them. It also gives them a feel for how much ocean and how many dangers he and his crew had to face. 

You could also use a drawing slide when you teach geometric figures and perspective to have students practice imagining (seeing and feeling) what each three-dimensional shape looks like in two dimensions (sphere becomes circle, cube becomes square).

Matching, coloring, and other uses of drawing slides. You can use drawing slides to give your students lots of other opportunities for haptic learning, like filling in objects with a color, drawing lines to match words and objects, or drawing arrows to indicate a sequence of steps in a process.

All drawing slides work best when small groups of students take turns drawing, so factor this into your lesson plan.

Haptic learning is catching on. Including drawing slides in your multiple-mouse lessons can help you incorporate this learning style in your teaching for the benefit of all your students.