Did the first quarter really come and go that quickly?  Are we really shopping for turkeys already?

Our latest major project has to do with PowerPoint presentations.  Several users have commented that they are using the older version of Microsoft PowerPoint (1997-2003), which goes under the file extension .ppt, as opposed to the latest version (2007), which goes under the file extension .pptx.

Here's the deal:  We create all of our PowerPoints as .pptx files.  Then we save them as .ppt files.  This would be terrific, except that a lot of the fancy new features in PowerPoint do not work in the 1997-2003 version.  The result is .pptx files that look terrific, and .ppt files that might not look so great.  The complaint from users downloading .ppt files has been that they have had to waste time cleaning up the presentations before they could use them.

We have a better solution.  And no, it doesn't require upgrading to the latest version of PowerPoint!  Instead, we have saved each presentation as a .pdf file which you can read and display using Adobe Acrobat Reader.  In fact, you can view and print the PowerPoints as .pdf files online (straight from your browser) without having to download them at all. 

While we were at it, we went ahead and created student notes hand-outs of the presentations.  Each page of the handouts looks like this: along the left side are three miniature versions of the slides, and along the right side are lines for student notes.  These files are also in .pdf format, meaning that you can view or view and print them straight from your browser.

This project involves going through all of our PowerPoints and "redoing" them.  We are more than halfway finished.  We thank you for your patience and ask that you bear with us for just a little bit longer.

Is the summer really nearly over?  If you're feeling the heat and humidity that we are feeling in the northeastern portion of the country, then you must be nearly as eager as we are for fall to finally arrive!

This upcoming school year looks to be full of collaborative opportunities to work on contributions to this site.  As we pursue the idea of teacher-created materials to accompany standard junior and senior high school textbooks, we will add many more to our current listings.  Keep your eyes peeled!

We hope that you are enjoying your summer vacation as much as we are.  The textbook handouts, begun last month, are about one-third complete.  If they are not completed by the end of summer, they will definitely be completed during the course of the school year (in time to keep up with course pacing).

Spring is all around!  Our eyes love it, but our allergies hate it. 

This past month, we finally got around to fixing up our blog.  We hope to update it regularly with thoughts, personal stories, etc., in a way that educators may find useful.

The newest feature is the Calendar section.  We created a new weekly planner for the 2009-2010 school year (it'll be here before you know it), dated monthly calendars through December, 2010, and a "What's so important about today?" feature.  The "What's So Important " pages feature each month, at a glance, with recurring holidays and today-in-history anecdotes.  The pages are not fully up yet, but we have created a lot of interesting, educational links for each posted event.  For example, the anniversary of the Bataan Death March links to additional information on the tragedy.

Please keep emailing us with your requests and suggestions, as we take them very seriously.  We will be very busy this summer uploading materials!  Okay, so we'll spend some time relaxing around the pool.  But on those rainy days, you can bet that we'll be at our computers.