Presentations – No Time to Sleep

“Crowd-Creating” a Presentation With Google

Wanting students to work as a class to create a presentation is not a new idea. Some of my colleagues were talking about doing this in science classes by having each student creates a slide, emailing it to the teacher, and the teaching combining the slides into one show to then post on Haiku. After some discussion, they warmed to the idea of doing the following:

1. Set up a Google Slide presentation (a title slide and one slide for each person or team if desired) that has permissions set to allow “Anyone with the link can edit.” (With this setting, up to 50 people could simultaneously edit the presentation.

2. Post the link on Haiku

3. Have students create their slides (or edit designated “placeholder” slides so the desired order is maintained)

The result? A presentation created by all, able to be referred to by all, and no time required by the teacher on the back end! It might not seem overly flashy, but the idea is moving through our faculty and they love it.

Haven’t explored Google Slides much? Here is a link to the Google Help Guide for Google Slides (Presentations).

Getting ready for Lake Geneva

This summer has been busier than anticipated. Since the grad school courses wrapped up, I spent some time checking out the digital support materials for information presented at ISTE this year. While disappointed that I didn’t attend this year, there were some interesting sessions in the “Video on Demand” section and some supporting websites with excellent resources. One of my professional goals is to attend ISTE 2012 with 9 members of our faculty.

The past week or so has been focused on preparing presentations for the Lake Geneva Technology Academy. Designing presentations is interesting, picking the style of presentation is, at times, difficult. My personal preference as an attendee is to sit and listen, take notes, think about what is being shared, let my mind drift on how I could use the new webtools, or who I could share them with. If I am interested in learning how to use specific tool, I like the workshop-style, walk me through with a hands-on learning opportunity. Earlier this summer I was reading a blog post (please forgive me I can’t remember which one) and the author was reflecting on how she (I remember it was a she) preferred to discuss, be an active part of the discussion and she would choose the participatory session over presentation.

The Google Geography (Maps and Earth) session I’m assembling is workshop-style. We will explore some sites including Dr. Alice Christie’s Google Treks for Google Maps, Google Lit Trips and Real World Math for Google Earth (of course we’ll use the .kmz files in Google Maps too, very cool), and then work on making our own tours in both Google Maps and Earth and customizing placemarks by embedding video, images and other creations.

The wiki workshop is a combination of instructor-led introduction, hands-on workshop practicing wiki skills, and group discussions on applications for wikis in the curriculum.

Finally, there is a Web 2.0/Webtools session. Last year the group informally voted and wanted to see as many tools as I had time to show them and didn’t want to discuss during the session how to use them or deep discussions on how to embed them into the curriculum. I intend to ask the audience for their preference. We will be the last 3-hour session at the end of their week-long workshop. Wow. I created a Livebinder for the session. I believe it has 90 some resources categorized under an “ABC” theme. The notebook isn’t quite ready for full public access in the Livebinder community, but if you would like to see it, click here. The access code is: etlabcs The URL sharing page is having an issue as Only2Clicks doesn’t seem to be letting me share a public page by URL at the moment (frustrating). I like Only2Clicks, but if I have to, I’ll try 3x3Links, they seem to be basically the same thing.

On to the handouts. I would like to finish them tonight so tomorrow can be the Twins game and then a drive with little to no work on these presentations!! 🙂

Stay cool!

It really coud be 60 sites in 60 minutes

Have you tried myjugaad.in yet? It allows users to add ULRs either via copy/paste, a tag or popular search with Yahoo, Google, Flickr, YouTube, news search, RSS feeds or delicious, and then it creates a full-screen slideshow showing each URL. The default advance for each slide is 60 seconds but users can reset the timing to a desired pace or manually advance or go back to a previous slide. Add a name to the slideshow and it is ready for prime time. When the slideshow is finished, users can share via URL, email, social networking and bookmarking tools, or embed code. If a user wants to edit a slideshow, simply log back in to MyJugaad.in, click “Dashboard” and all of the slideshows are displayed.

If giving a presentation of a variety of resources and time is of the essence, MyJugaad.in could be a great tool. Embedding a MyJugaad.in slidshow onto a class website or wiki would also be a great tool to showcase websites or certain wiki pages created by students. To check it out, I made this slideshow which highlights cartooning websites I’ve been collecting.

B is for Brightness!

I am so excited. Last week I finished the three presentations in three days, the last one with the Minnesota Historical Society on using technology in the Social Studies classroom. The workshop was a success for many reasons but my day-making takeaway came five minutes before we started. I was looking unhappily at the brightness of the projection from my computer (I was using a Macbook Pro – like it, but I’m still learning the hardware side of it…) and one of the participants from Wayzata walked me through the calibration of the computer which adjusts the brightness.

I am psyched to know this as several of my colleagues had contacted Apple about the “darkness” problem and did not receive helpful information and the company our school contracts with to address certain technology planning and infrastructure issues didn’t know this information either (they did try to help, and know just about everything with PCs, but they didn’t know this either). If you are using a Mac and happen to be dealing with a projected screen so dark you can’t easily make out images, hook up to a projector and give this a try:

Under “System Preferences” select “Displays”
Select “Color” and then “Calibrate.”
Click through the basic buttons until you get the Apple with the lines as background
Drag the arrow to the right, somewhere between the second and third hash seems to be the answer.
There is an advanced option when you first go into Calibrate if success is not achieved in the first attempts.

Good luck! It is working for our school as it makes its way from room to room! 🙂