Using Multimedia Annotation Tool for the Instructional Cues and Explanations

This paper extends the idea of presenting multimedia information through presentation by developing a PowerPoint Annotation Tool (PPAT) for teachers to insert various annotations into PowerPoint slides. The tool is built on multi-monitor technologies, aiming to make the presentations more instructional. Many studies have shown that annotations can support remembering, thinking, and clarifying to promote learning. In this paper, we use the PPAT to build up the referential connections of visual and verbal learning contents in PowerPoint presentation. Thus, learners can easily comprehend the learning contents through those additional annotations embedded into the slideshow of PowerPoint presentation. In fact, The PPAT is a teaching-aided tool that can extend the comment features of PowerPoint presentation and it also provides a multi-monitor mechanism to display teaching materials and annotations on the same projection screen or the different projection screens according to instructional arrangement for reaching the desired learning effectiveness. The PPAT supports two operational modes: one is authoring mode and the other is presentation mode. A teacher can insert various annotations containing some instructional purposes into a well-designed PowerPoint file in authoring mode, and then the teacher operates presentation mode to present this PowerPoint file. Those annotations will be orderly displayed on PowerPoint presentation among the desired instructional arrangements during authoring mode. From the information displaying viewpoints of PowerPoint presentation by using the PPAT, there are two different displaying views, a teaching view and a learning view, to show teaching contents and learning contents for teacher and students respectively. In the teaching view, the teacher can control all of the thumbnails of PowerPoint slides and their embedded annotations on his/her computer monitor, and display the PowerPoint slides and their embedded annotations in sequence or in parallel on the projection screen. In the learning view, students can see the slides and annotations, if needed, in learning activity. Through the cognitive connection between main learning contents shown by PowerPoint slides and various annotation illustrating instructional comments on the slides, learners can easily and quickly comprehend the learning content to enhance the teaching and learning effectiveness. Keywords: Instructional Cues, Learning Annotation, Multi-Purpose Annotations