Forget PowerPoint! Use These!

Here's a great overview of some tools that you can use to present content that doesn't involve bullet points on a slide. It's called "A New Way To Lecture" and it was put together by Michael Zimmer. Thanks to Kathy Schrock's weekly "Help for Busy School Teachers" for bringing it to my attention. I shall definitely use this both with my own faculty and with the Independent School's Beginning Teacher Institute technology lessons I will offer beginning soon.

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Prezi

The Free Technology for Teachers Blog, he highlighted a new Web 2.0 "presentation" tool called Prezi. They are now offering free accounts for Educators and students. At first, I ignored it because it seemed kind of gimmicky. It's a visual presentation that gets rid of the slide concept and uses a widescreen boardspace instead. You use the size of text to indicate relevance and relationship of ideas. You can embed documents/images, draw arrows, etc. There are different styles of backgrounds and a presentation can be set to "autoplay" by indicating the path the "animaton" should follow when play is clicked. I have recently been tasked to outline the navigation structure of the World Leadership School's Web site (including revisions). I was just going to use Excel, but decided to give Prezi a try instead. Here are the results. I am not sure it's useful...but then I am a very linear thinker, so it might not seem so to me, but might seem great to some other kind of thinker. What do YOU think?

Converting PowerPoint Into Video Files

Forgive my enthusiasm but YAHOOOOOOO! I've just quite accidentally discovered a tool I have longed for, but have never found...until today. Our Lower School Head prepared a Powerpoint for today's special Inauguration Day assembly. She uses PowerPoint the way it was meant to used, with absolutely no pages-full of bullet points. They're mini-movies, actually. This one was so great, I cried a little at the end. A few of the parents asked if I could make the PowerPoint available online and I cringed a bit because I have tried before. I could get the slides on, a la Slideshare, but that leaves out the touching narrative and music she included. I could try to upload it to Voicethread, but all the people who contributed audio would have to rerecord their sections. In a moment of "what the heck" I googled for PowerPoint to Video File and voila: Byte Scout. This somewhat sketchy looking site features a tool called PPT to Video Scout. I downloaded the free trial version of the product, somewhat recklessly given the site's appearance, but I threw caution to the wind and relied on my virus protection software to save me.

Turns out, PPT to Video Scout worked like A CHARM! It was easy to use and encoded the whole thing without a fuss to MPG, with several other file format options to boot. The PowerPoint was then uploaded to TeacherTube, so I could embed it on my school's Web site. The product's trial period ends in 28 days. If I want to buy it, which I do, it'll cost me $75. Not bad! Check the quality:

Getting It All Right

Mea culpa. I got it all wrong in my last blog post "The Death of Crayons." I ruminated on it some more yesterday and I suppose I had an epiphany. What's the whole point of this blog? Helping children to merge their educational use of technology with their personal use of technology. So, that's exactly what The PowerPoint Kid was doing. He was merging his interest in dinosaurs with his interest in PowerPoint and producing new media on the matter. It's my dream outcome, really, and what do I do when faced with my dream? Miss the point!

The good news is that I didn't miss it altogether. I got it loud and clear today. My work is moving forward and that child is proof positive. I hear he's out boogie-boarding today. Just goes to show you, Rousseau was right. "Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken."

Image credit: www.noappp.org

The Death of Crayons?

It has been almost a month since school has been over. Today, I got an email from a parent at my school whose son, when asked what he'd like to do that day (beach or pool?) responded: "I'd like to finish up my PowerPoint today." Did I mention that this child is seven years old? I had mixed feelings about the email.

1) Horror--that a child would prefer to work on the computer than go to the pool or beach on a lovely summer day. Why, why, why?
2) Pride--that the child had learned so much in our two lessons on PowerPoint during second grade that he could make his own Power points.
3) Concern--had he really written all of the things in the PowerPoint or was he ALREADY learning to copy and paste? Would he be so far ahead of his peers that I will need to arrange for advanced lessons for him? Probably. Ugh.

Maybe I should be proud that my students are so into technology that they want to use it during the summer to produce Power points on subjects that interest them...never mind that no one besides their parents will ever see these great works. But then, you could say the same thing about artwork children make in their bedrooms with their 64-pack of crayons (oooohhh, how I wanted one of those). Maybe PowerPoint is just the new coloring?

Image credit: www.d84.org/DP/Pics/crayons.JPG