Technology in the Education Arena » Presentations

Note on Wordle

jzcolby — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:04:25 +0000

In my prior post, I wrote about Wordle. This is a great tool; however, as with anything on the Internet, you need to be aware of the inappropriate content. There is a Gallery with Worlde that, as mentioned before, can contain inappropriate words. On the Wordle home page, the latest Wordles created are shown. To bypass the home page for the students, go to http://wordle.net/create. This will allow you to go directly to the “Create” page. It really is worth investigating. Simple but effective!

Great Beginning of School Year Project

jzcolby — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:14:28 +0000

Discovered this site the other day and thought — wouldn’t this be great for students to use the beginning of the school year?

http://wordle.net

Wordle is a tool that looks at the text you provide (students can type in words that describe themselves; words that describe their choice for presidential candidate; words that describe what they want to learn about this school year; words that describe a time in history they are learning about; their vocabulary words they are having a difficult time with; words that describe a country they are learning about, and on and on) and generates a “word cloud” from those words. The word cloud gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can change the font, change the layout, and change the color scheme. Once you have created your “word cloud” the students can take a screenshot to save and paste into an application or save to Paint/Photoshop to then save as a jpg image to use in a project — PowerPoint, Slideshare, PhotoStory, Blog, Wiki, etc. Or, they can choose to print it out and make a bulletin board in the classroom of the words. So many uses for this very easy tool. Caution: The Wordle Gallery — if they browse through the Wordle Gallery, could be inappropriate content; but they don’t have to browse to create.

For frequently asked questions: http://wordle.net/faq

The Thrill of Presentations

jzcolby — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:06:40 +0000

TPDS – who are they? They are “tech savvy” teachers who have agreed to help others in their school with technology. TPDS is an acronymn for Technology Professional Development Specialists. They are a great bunch of teachers and very helpful in our district.

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

Microsoft Photo Story Project

jzcolby — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:35:46 +0000

Last week, I worked with 5 classes of 8th Grade Students on a great project. The students did research on the presidential candidates. Each student selected their candidate and wrote an essay focusing on their selection. They concluded their essay with a brief paragraph on the candidate’s views. This is where I came in. We had about 50 minutes in which to learn Photo Story, go to the Internet and download a photo of their candidate, create their own project in Photo Story and record audio (which would be the brief paragraph from their essay), add some effects, titles, and possibly some transitions. No one had background in Photo Story or making movies — this was all new to the students.

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.

National Geographic Photos

jzcolby — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:36:32 +0000

Great Student Site for Photographs from National Geographic

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photogalleries?nav=TOPNAV

Categories such as Adventure & Exploration, Nature & Weather, Science & Space, Underwater, Animals, People & Culture, and Travel.
Most Popular Galleries Include: Snowflakes, Valleys, Northern Lights, Relentless Enemies: Lions and Buffalo, Brain, Coastlines, Clouds, Lungs, and Jurassic Period.

Added benefits of the site: You can sign up for free newsletters where you get new photos and expert tips once a month; Photo of the Day; and Digital Photography Tips.

MassCUE Conference — November 14-15

jzcolby — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:41:42 +0000

MassCUE is holding their 25th Annual State Technology Conference next week — November 14th & 15th in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. I am very excited about the conference. Going to attend some great sessions and I am very lucky to be presenting with Beth Knittle on Wednesday. Our presentation is entitled, “Second Life and Education: Expanding Your Learning.” On Thursday, we will be available for a “lab” type session where you can bring your laptop and work in Second Life and we will be available for help.

Session Handouts (scroll to the bottom of the Second Life page)

Videos, Slideshows, Handouts

jzcolby — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 16:24:53 +0000

Just went to Bloglines to catch up on some reading and my first posting was from Beth Knittle from Beth’s Thoughts referencing the Moving Forward wiki which lists videos, slideshows, and handouts (all in one place). A great reference.

Downloading YouTube Videos

jzcolby — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:52:29 +0000

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!

Presentation Options

jzcolby — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:32:55 +0000

So, you want to have your students create a presentation. Do we work with PowerPoint again? Well, you could – but you have so many more options…

Microsoft Photo Story 3
Free download from Microsoft. Import your images, add some music, add some text, record some audio, and you have a project.
Download at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx
Tutorial: http://www.windowsphotostory.com/

Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net
A cool place to host and share presentations.
Upload all your slide decks, and find/download interesting presentations.
Janetta Garton’s, Willard School District/Fusion Finds Blog, has published a link to her great Slideshare Handout. Check out her blog posting pointing out the ability to Embed Slideshare into a blog post.

Slide at http://www.slide.com/
Slide lets you use photos and other digital content to publish.
Slide Blog: http://blog.slide.com/

Animoto: http://animoto.com/
Animoto analyzes your images, feels your music, and customizes a video. Built by real TV and Film Producers. Puts together a short video.

Google Docs at http://docs.google.com/
Just added the capability to make presentations.

All these tools are wonderful to use and will give a different flavor to your classroom presentations.

Slideshare + Podcast = Slidecast

jzcolby — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:41:10 +0000

Slideshare now has the capability to enter an mp3 url to accompany your slideshare presentation. So many cool tools. For instructions.