Making Mischief

My students and I been trying out Mouse Mischief in our lessons over the last couple of weeks. It’s great – I never knew PowerPoint could be so much fun!

First things first: what is Mouse Mischief? It’s a free add in for PowerPoint 2007 or 2010 which allows you to connect multiple mice to one PC, rather like a voting system. My school already has a voting system that works with PowerPoint, so why have I been so totally won over by Mouse Mischief?

1. It’s really easy to use.

Once the software has been downloaded from the Mouse Mischief homepage and installed, an extra tab appears in PowerPoint:

The Multiple-Mouse tab is very easy to use, it’s simply a matter of clicking the buttons. Anyone who can use PowerPoint should be able to do this without any trouble at all, but you will find lots of advice and step-by-step instructions on Microsoft’s Mouse Mischief site – actually, the site is really helpful, I think they’ve done a really good job on this.

Making an interactive presentation is pretty intuitive: start by adding a new slide, then decide to leave it as a normal slide (which won’t show multiple mice – useful for learning objectives, teaching points etc), or make it interactive. Interactive slides can offer a choice of yes or no, or they can be multiple choice (with 2-10 answers) or even a drawing slide. Setting the correct answer on a multiple choice is mater of two clicks. I really like the fact that once I’ve assigned a correct answer I can see a big tick on the screen, so I’m unlikely to make a mistake (when I’m using the presentation with students, the green tick only appears once they have all answered).

Mouse Mischief also easy to use in the classroom, in fact it’s some of the little details that have really won me over:

• the teacher’s mouse/keyboard is always in control
• the multiple mice only appear on the interactive slides
• I can hide the students mice with a single key stroke (down arrow) and switch them back on once I’m ready – great if I want to build in some thinking time, or make sure that the students understand a key word or phrase before they answer
• the students get one attempt at answering each question (unless the teacher refreshes the slide)
• as soon as students have answered, their cursor disappears – this is such a nice, practical feature, I love it!
• the students get feedback about which mouse was the first to select the correct answer, which really encourages them to join in promptly

2. It’s amazingly popular  with students

There’s a really cheesy video on the Mouse Mischief You Tube channel. Just take a look: students who are so bored that they’ve turned the film into a dull, old black and white movie are magically transformed into thrilled and enthused Technicolor learners.

“Pfft," I thought to myself. Then I had to do a little mental climb down as I watched my Y7 class undergo a similar transformation. They love it.

3. It’s a really useful Assessment for Learning tool

As soon as the last student has clicked an answer, the results appear: I can see how many opted for each choice and the students can see which choice was correct. One click hides this, so we can go back to the slide and discuss problems if we need to.

4. It’s reliable

Our current voting system has been a bit glitchy, especially since I upgraded to Office 2007. A frozen screen doesn’t help the lesson along. So far I’ve only used Mouse Mischief with seven mice, but it has behaved itself perfectly.

5. It’s cheap

The Mouse Mischief add-in is free. (I know PowerPoint isn’t free, but like many teachers, I already had that installed.) I purchased six cheap wireless mice (just £5 each). They aren’t great, but they’ve done the job. I already had a powered USB hub. Six mice is enough – I just divided my bigger classes into teams. Then I realised that I could plug in my wired mouse and give it to a team sitting at the front. That works well – even with a class of 32.

The number of mice is limited (about five for machines running Windows XP SP3, about 25 for Vista or Windows 7), but even 25(ish) good quality mice will be a lot cheaper than a voting system. My small set of mice will be heading to my new school with me in September, but I’m hoping to have persuaded my current school that it’s worth making a very modest investment in some hardware to allow even the least tech-minded teacher to create interactive lessons.

OK, so what are the drawbacks?

There aren’t many to be honest, but these are the main ones:

1. Mouse Mischief doesn’t work with transitions or animations. This isn’t something I make  lot of use of, but it would have been better to know that before I spent ages animating a set of cubes to show how to work out volume.
2. I’m not certain about the drawing slides. They could work really well, but the classes I’ve used this with have simply gone crazy with the mice and scribbled everywhere.
3. It’s not easy to tell which mouse belongs to which student. I’m thinking of taking some screenshots of the different cursors so that I can print and laminate them, then get students to collect the appropriate one and put it on their desk where I can see it. However, the classes that I’ve used this with have quickly got used to it and been pretty sensible with the mice, so I may not bother.
4. There isn’t any sort of record to show who got each question correct; something that is possible with our existing voting system. On the other hand, I use this data only rarely – and only when I’ve got a small enough class that they have one voting handset each. Easy solution – I can continue to use the voting system when I want the data, but I’ll use Mouse Mischief – which is easier to set up and more fun to use – if I don’t need the data at the end.