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Holidays should be a time for families to get together and catch up on the past year. But, these days with so many distractions (Xbox, Blackberries and iPods) it's a lot harder to promote positive family interaction. So when attention spans are short, headphones are on and cell phones are ringing it might leave you asking what happened to that Norman Rockwell family holiday? Unless you can compete with the latest technology and stimulate all the senses there's not much chance of hearing about winning the state championships or the camping trip to Yellow Stone this summer.

The only answer is to bring technology and interaction into the holiday by proposing a multimedia presentation contest. It might sound extravagant and even impossible to you, but rest assured many school aged children and teenagers know how to build slideshows in PowerPoint or even produce a video on their computer. The best thing about having a family multimedia presentation is that it's a great activity that all ages can enjoy together.

To keep it fun and creative ask the participants to build a photo slideshow or video essay of what they what to share about their year. This can include scanned photos, digital photos, or even video clips put together in a computer presentation format that can be easily shared. Since production could be time consuming make sure you give everyone enough time to pull everything together. Also, if you have a large family having a competition between family members adds more fun and excitement to the gathering. If you don't have a large family, having the kids put together one large presentation works well.

A good way to set up the competition is to have the children of each separate immediate family put together a presentation. This way you ensure that everyone gets their turn and it builds a little friendly competition. Scoring is easy; every presentation gets a score from one to ten on the following three categories: content, production and presentation skills. The one with the highest total score by adding up all three categories wins. If you want to up the stakes you could even handout family Oscars.

To make your family presentation more impactful try projecting the presentation on a large wall using a PC projector or hook it up to a large screen TV. These days family time is almost non-existent, a family multimedia presentation is a good way to change that and who knows if might even become a fun family tradition.