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Do you think Powerpoint is just for presentations? Meetings? Display? Think again. Powerpoint can also be used to create cool trivia and strategy games.

Creating trivia games is easy. Simply write down your multiple choice  trivia questions and answers. Then, create a Powerpoint presentation with one question or answer on each slide. You can add animations, graphics, or sounds too.  Then, hook up your computer to a projector or large monitor so everyone can see your presentation. Have your teens or teams create answer cards on labeled A-D on scrap paper. Then, when playing, they can hold them up before you display the answer.

TIP: It’s important to keep your script and to keep track of which teens or teams answered correctly before displaying the answer to avoid confusion.

Next, there are strategy games. These are similar to “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” novels. They can be used to tease plots of book discussion books, or teens can create their own to share with the group. For these, you’ll be creating links to slides within the presentation. To do this with Powerpoint 2007:

1) Select the text that you wish to use to create the link. This will be part of your choice. For example, if you have the choice “fight the dragon” or “run away” you are going to create a link to a different slide for each choice.

2) With your mouse, right click on your selected text. A drop-down menu will appear. Select “Hyperlink” from this menu.

3) This will bring up another menu. On the left, you will notice tabs with places to link to. Select the tab labeled “Place in this document”. After doing this, you will see a list of the slides you have created on the right. Select the title of the slide that you wish to link to.

TIP: Be sure to map out your game so that you will know how many slides that you need for each decision. Also, keep your slide titles relevant to save time and aggravation when creating links.

You can create as many decisions, choices, questions, and answers as you want, but remember that each item you add will increase the file size which may create a problem when transferring it to another computer.

Six months ago, I walked into a room full of strangers. When I walk into the room today, I’m going to greet my friends.

I met my Emerging Leaders group for the first time at ALA Midwinter in San Diego and since then, it’s been months of conference calls, brainstorming, and wonderful collaboration. Today, our hard work comes to a head as we present our poster on videogame collection development at the Emerging Leaders Poster Session.

Believe me, I have thought more about videogames these past few months than in the rest of my life combined! And I think we have come up with a really stellar project that will be helpful to a lot of librarians starting up or maintaining videogame collections. If you’re reading this from New Orleans, I hope you’ll stop by the Emerging Leaders Poster Session from 3:00pm-4:00pm in Conference Center Room 271-273 to check out all the amazing projects.

If you’re playing along at home, check out our project website and stay tuned because I’ll be blogging about the poster session later in the day!

PS: New Orleans humidity/rain vs. my flat iron. Who will win?

Title: Tiny Pixels
Platform: Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad / Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later
Cost: $1.99 (iPhone, iPod Touch) or $2.99 (iPad) There is also a Free version called Tiny Pixels Lite, but it does not have all the features of the paid versions.

I have always admired video games and web comics that use pixel art. Until recently, I did not think there was anyway for me to create my own (horrible) pixel art except on graph paper, but then I discovered Tiny Pixels. If you are unfamiliar with pixel art, think of popular video games from the mid-1980s to early 1990s. Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda were both created in this pixel-by-pixel style. For more modern examples, you can see some amazing works of pixel art here at Koi Koi Koi, a digital visual arts magazine, or here at Noupe Design Blog.

Though the versions of Tiny Pixels for iPad or iPhone differ slightly, the differences are mainly related to the size of the screen. For example, Tiny Pixels for iPad has a selectable canvas size from 16×16 to 512×512 while the selectable canvas size for iPhone or iPod Touch is 16×16 to 300×300.

Some features available on all versions of the Tiny Pixels app that make it fun and useful:

• An adjustable brush size makes it simple to draw fine lines or fill in large areas of the canvas at a time.
• You can opt to show grid lines on the canvas so your straight lines are indeed straight and so you know exactly what pixel you are filling in.
• There is a works gallery for the artist to store and view completed works.
• Images can be saved and sent via email (png or jpeg), or exported to iPhoto albums (jpeg only). It is interesting to note that you can also import an image from your Photo albums to Tiny Pixels. This is great for creating pixilated self-portraits!

Naturally, there are some things the creators of this app could improve:

• There is a transparency tool, but as others in the app store comments have noted, it would be nice to be able to select transparency level in numeric form (10% transparent, 32% transparent, etc.).
• Because today’s teens are most likely familiar with Photoshop, they might miss a layering feature. Tiny Pixels does not allow layering, and the addition of one might make this app more appealing to established Photoshop Artists.
• There are not many features missing from this app, but the minor differences among platforms and in pricing could cause confusion.
• The largest problem for me was my own ability to push single pixels. A stylus would easily solve this problem, but if one is not readily available, it is difficult to draw fine lines.

Though this app would be great to introduce during a graphic novel program (teens could use it to create their own superheroes, villains, city-scapes, or other images), I also see uses for this as a pattern creator. Knitting and other forms of needlework are increasingly popular, and this app could be used

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Hi, all. If you’re in the mood for some short fiction, you can now read two of my short stories, written last year while I was deep into my quantum physics research for my upcoming trilogy, INTO THE PARALLEL. You can tell my brain was pretty physicsy at the time.

They are:

A SKIP OF THE MIND: A physicist must find a unique solution to the problem of time travel if he wants to save his wife.

GAMEMASTER: They say high school is a game . . . For one girl, it’s a game she’s in charge of. A stroke of a key, an equation, a few changes in molecules and atoms here and there, and suddenly the losers aren’t such outcasts anymore. Nicki isn’t doing it to be noble, she’s doing it for sport. Because she can. But what happens to the people she’s remade? Who’s in charge of them now?

Hope you like them!

Technorati Tags: Computers, Fantasy Fiction, Fantasy Paranormal, Gaming, Paranormal, Paranormal Fiction, Physics, Quantum Physics, Science Fiction, Science Stories, Short Fiction, Short Stories, Time Travel

Title: Plants vs. Zombies
Platform: iPhone, iPad, Nintendo DS, XBOX Live, Windows, Mac and online
Cost: ranges from free online version to $19.95 for the Windows version. The iPhone version is $2.99

Happy Teen Tech Week! We haven’t had a game for our App of the Week a little while, so I decided to write about a favorite cross-platform game of mine:  Plants vs. Zombies.  It’s a puzzle game where you organize an army of plants, each with different abilities, to defend your house from the oncoming zombie hoards.  The zombies, too, come in many types, each with their own styles and talents.  The game’s bright colors, amusing design, and catchy music all contribute to making it seriously distracting.  Gameplay is simple, but presents a variety of challenges as you advance through the levels.  You can play in short bursts, just a level at a time, or get caught up and while away hours defeating level after level of zombie attacks.

Plants vs. Zombies offers an adventure mode with four different landscapes of increasing difficulty where you can kill zombies.  Once you beat all of these, there is a list of achievements you can work towards, challenging you to go back through the game and complete certain tasks.  There are also 49 plants to collect, from pea shooters to cabage-pults, and 25 different kinds of zombies, including football player zombie, dancing zombie, and Zamboni driving zombie.  In the newly updated version there is also a zombie avatar creator, called the zombitar creator, where you can make your own zombie to turn loose in the game.

Plants vs. Zombies is made by Pop Cap, a company that is responsible for other great games like Bejeweled and Alchemy.  They refer the style of these titles as “casual games”. They’re easy to play and require minimal time commitment.  That is, if you can stop once you’ve gotten started.

Zombies are everywhere right now.  In books like Rot & Ruin, and Zombies vs. Unicorns, in movies like Zombieland, and all over Internet humor. It makes this the perfect time to introduce your teens to a great zombie game that they can play on so many devices.  Or if they are already playing, you can compare achievements and strategy. Try linking to the free version of the game on your library’s website or Facebook page.

Play Plants vs  Zombies for free here.
And check out the official website for reviews, music videos, and the zombie avatar creator.