"Follow step-by-step, or pick and choose from Gust's exhaustive strategies for teaching setting, characterization, plot, dialogue, figurative language, and mechanics.  A treasury of information and imagination for middle-grade writing teachers whose goal is to provide students with a means to discover the joy and accomplishment of good story writing." —David Gifaldi, MFA Professor in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College, 5^th-grade teacher, and author of Listening for Crickets 

"As the complexity and sophistication of educational technology increases exponentially it is easy to overlook the simple but still powerful teaching tools available to us all.  Finkelstein and Samsonov do us a service in reminding us of just how useful and flexible PowerPoint can be as a powerful, creative, and user-friendly interactive teaching tool.  With this book, any teacher interested in bringing technology into their teaching can do so, and to their students' benefit."—Robert Slater, Ph.D., Professor, Texas A&M University, founder of "Inquiry and Creativity" charter schools  

"This how-to guide on the use of PowerPoint helps educators move into more visually oriented, interactive levels of teaching, where students are more likely to remember and use what we have taught them. I'd recommend every teacher add these simple technologies to their repertoire of teaching strategies." —Christopher Jones, chairman, Department of Education, Maharishi University of Management (Fairfield, IA)