I have been requested to put together a summer training for the TPDS in our district.  What to present took quite a bit of thought.  First, I went back to the Google on-line survey (using Google Docs) they filled out at the end of the year asking them what they would be interested in learning more about.  Almost every one of the responses noted that they would be interested in learning more about Presentations OnLine using tools such as Slideshare, BubbleShare, VoiceThread, Animoto – you get the picture. 

It just so happens that I was lucky enough to attend NECC this summer for the first time and had a FABULOUS time.  I attended a session entitled One Hour PowerPoint: A Strategy for Improving Presentations by David Jakes (http://jakes.editme.com/onehourppt) and Dean Shareski (http://ideasandthoughts.org/).  Check out Wesley Fryer’s excellent notes at http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2008/06/30/one-hour-powerpoint-a-strategy-for-improving-presentations-by-david-jakes/.  Yes, I thought the same thing – PowerPoint?  Isn’t that so old news?  Well, it also mentioned Visual Communication and Literacy, so I thought – why not give it a try!  Went with my boss and a colleague of mine.  We all loved the presentation and picked up some great info.  PowerPoint presentations can be quite fascinating if done correctly!

Some of the highlights of what we learned –

• Move away from text
• Presentations are Performances
• Dual Processing: Visual and Auditory
• Teach Students how to find Images
• Teach them about Intellectual Property
• Teach them Design
• Teach them to Sell a Message
• Color is Important
• Teach them to incorporate multimedia

David Jakes notes that it all starts with a bit of biology of the brain — http://strengthofweakties.org/?p=280 and how the brain works.  This ties together so well with the graduate course I took this summer entitled Brain-Based Learning.  So, my TPDS training started to come together.  I also thought it needs to be beneficial to all – elementary teachers to high school teachers in addition to satisfying those with varying skill levels.  Let us not forget what the ultimate product is – a student or teacher-created product which can reach many types of learners.

It is with this that I am focusing on “The Thrill of Presentations” for my training.  This title opens up so many doors – Slideshare, Bubbleshare, Voicethread, Animoto, WebSlides, One True Media, Slide, Flickr, Flickr Storm, Creative Commons.  I will be introducing the tool and giving them time to explore it online.  On my wiki, I put together information for each tool on where to sign up for the tool, where to get help, examples, and more. 

One of the two days I have to go over our new e-mail package.  Of course I will do this, but hopefully will quickly move into what I call “extras” to our Presentation training – TeacherTube, SchoolTube, Flip Video, and a couple great new tips on the latest version of SMARTBoard software.

OK, I know I have way too much here, but there are so many great tools out there, how could I just pick a few?  Hopefully, they can look at one tool a month and by the end of the school year, think of how many new tools they will have tried?

My Resources:

Wiki Page Listing Tools for “The Thrill of Presentations”

http://juliazanglcolby.wikispaces.com/Presentations+OnLine

Wiki Page Listing Tools on “Photo Management”

http://juliazanglcolby.wikispaces.com/PhotoManagement

Wiki Page Listing SMARTBoard Sites

http://juliazanglcolby.wikispaces.com/SMARTBoard

 To view the WebSlide I created which shows a screen shot of the Internet sites, visit http://www.diigo.com/list/jzcolby/pps-technology-summer-training

http://slides.diigo.com/list/jzcolby/pps-technology-summer-training

I am enrolled in an Immigration course and am reading the book “The Inner World of the Immigrant Child.”  It is a very good book and a must read for any teacher dealing with immigrants.  An assignment in this class was to watch the movie “In America.”  What a great assignment and well worth the time.  Had to go to an ethnic restaurant for one of the assignments, so I chose “The Brazilian Grill.”  It was an interesting experience and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It is nice to take a course that doesn’t always focus on technology.

For my Millennials class, my final project is focusing on professional development in Second Life.  I created a PowerPoint as a tutorial on Microsoft PhotoStory, then saved the PP slides as jpgs so I could upload them to the whiteboard in our school’s building in Second Life.  So far so good.  Then I took one of the student projects that they did in PhotoStory and turned it into a QuickTime movie (through the use of Zamzar).  This allowed me to upload it to the media player in Second Life.  So, now I had the slides for the professional development and the movie for a sample product.  Was hoping to present this at the DEN in Second Life, but they are all booked up for March.

Another project I worked on was the new Google form creator.  It was very easy to make the form, fill it out, and view the results.  Nice part is that you can share the form results (which are in the spreadsheet) with others if you choose. 

For my Universal Design for Learing/Assistive Technology class, I was able to (finally) post a movie on TeacherTube and YouTube.  Created a great polygon diagram in PowerPoint.  Saved the slides as images and put them, again, into PhotoStory.  Put narration to each slide describing the polygons and then turned it into a QuickTime movie using Zamzar.  Uploaded to the Internet and it worked great.

So, it was quite a productive week – even got some cleaning, baking, cooking, shopping, bills, income taxes, and movie watching done.

Love having time to do whatever …

I burned all their movies to a cd and the teacher played them back to each class on our Primary Election day.  Each student was successful; the students loved it; their teacher loved it; I loved it; and the main point — they learned so much and it was authentic, interactive, and learner-centered.  I was very proud of them and it was great collaborating with the teacher on the project.

To view one of the completed projects, check out the movie below.
(Please note that this is not an advertisement for this candidate — just a posting of a student project.) 

Download

Microsoft Photo Story 3 is a free download.  If you have a Mac, you can accomplish this in Garage Band by creating a podcast or using iMovie.  Both programs allow you to add voice, music background, digital images. 

Another interesting thing I tried was to take the completed Photo Story project which is a wmv file viewable with Windows Media Player, run it through Zamzar to convert it to a mov file viewable with QuickTime (which is what I posted).  I am trying that out because I would like to show the project in Second Life on the media player in our school building.  For that, you need it in QuickTime format.

Find a great educational video on YouTube but YouTube is blocked at your school?  Well, you are in luck.  You can download YouTube videos and then burn them onto a CD or DVD for use in your classroom (or just download them to your notebook).

I have chosen to use Zamzar which is a very simple process.  You enter the URL of the YouTube video, choose the format to convert to, enter your e-mail address, and click on convert.  EASY.  You will receive an e-mail message stating it is complete and a link on where you can access the converted movie file and download.

There are many other tools out there you can use.  Mashable, a Social Networking News Site, has created a post listing the tools. 

Zamzar has a blog and an entry containing a video tutorial on how to use this tool.  Also, Zamzar is not just for converting YouTube videos — you can convert a multitude of other formats.  GREAT Tool to have in your ToolBox!