Using Multiple Mouse Point (Microsoft® Mouse Mischief)

by: Virdian Sefrizal

I believe teachers love to use technology when teaching either in a classroom or outside. There are reasons why teachers use technology for teaching, like to capture student’s attention, to build interaction with the students or to make students interact with each other, to present a lesson, to create assessment and store the result, and many others. In this post, I would like to share an instance of technology that teachers can apply in their classrooms. It is called multiple point mouse or Microsoft® mouse mischief.

Mouse mischief is software developed by Microsoft. For further information and download link for the software you may click the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/multipoint/mouse-mischief/en-us/default.aspx. It is an add-on for Microsoft® PowerPoint. It is advisable that you have installed at least Microsoft® Office 2007. It offers a number of functions for classroom use, especially to make assessment or evaluation, like true or false, multiple choice, and drawing.

This software is very useful especially for teaching children class. It helps pacify some rowdy students who sometimes drive teachers crazy. They will be interested in following the lesson and doing the quiz. Other students will be attracted to the lesson also since it creates interactivity. The advantages for teachers are that the software shows different mouse points so it enables the teachers to know which students make the most participation, and the students to answer the quiz. Eventually, for assessment purpose, teachers will also be able to see who can answer correctly and who can’t.

Like using other teaching aids, teachers must also be knowledgeable of how to use multiple mouse points. There things which teachers must fulfill in order to use the software successfully in classroom. They are;

1. the teacher must have a sound knowledge about the content although she can easily use ready-made PowerPoint slides created with Mouse Mischief by other teachers;
2. she should be able to use Microsoft® PowerPoint and create the slides well;
3. she should prepare things necessary for her class, i.e. mice, USB hub, LCD projector, etc.

The followings are videos related to this post.

• Microsoft’s promotional video for Mouse Mischief
• Classroom setup for Mouse Mischief

That’s all. Have a try.