Though I am retired from public education, keeping my Alabama administrative licensure alive is a priority. To fulfill the requirements, I am participating in several technology-related online courses. This presentation was created as part of an online course on “Total Cost of Ownership.”

The premise of the presentation is that teachers and building-level administrators need a simple tool which will help them think through the various costs related to technology purchases. In this project, we look at TCO through the eyes of the classroom teacher, asking questions a teacher would need to answer when writing a grant for technology purchases or budgeted other available funds.

I developed a spreadsheet that asks pertinent questions, and uses the dollars-and-cents answers to those questions to craft annual estimates on the TCO of planned purchases. The video includes a link to the spreadsheet which viewers can download and use for free.

Creating a PowerPoint presentation was an option for constructing this presentation. In fact, it actually started that way.

Anyone who has attended my workshop on “Why Your PowerPoints are Awful and What to Do About It” knows how I feel about slide after slide which consists solely of text. I like to use pictures to add to the story I am telling. Situations such as this one, however, present an interesting problem. How can you tell the story, when you are not there?

I am a fan of Photo Story 3. It’s been around for a while, so if you go to a workshop on the latest apps, programs, or websites, you won’t hear anything about Photo Story. It’s simple and it works, and those are two pretty good characteristics.

I saved the PowerPoint presentation as GIF. PowerPoint converted each slide to a GIF image and stored them in a folder. The next step was to import that entire set of photos into a story in Photo Story. The next steps included:

• Adding voice to each slide.
• Adjusting the motion path of each slide.
• Adding background music.
• Saving the project in the desired form.
• Uploading the video to YouTube.
• Grabbing the embed code and inserting it into this blog post.

On one level, I hope you download the spreadsheet, take it for a test drive, and make it better. Make it fit your needs. Secondly, I hope that if you are looking for a different, more interesting, way to use PowerPoint, you will find it here.