Lecture without much interaction, good
structure/sequence, and/or interactive media can be boring, and we all
have bad experiences from (long and tedious) PowerPoint presentation. If any tool
from this week is selected and used well, it will make presenting
contents much more interesting. There are many tools and media hypes
about podcasting, screen capturing, online video, and virtual
conferencing, but it's all about presenting and sharing more rich
contents - easier, faster, and involving the audience. Tools selected for this
week exactly address that - some focus more on audio, others are more
on video or visuals:
- Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Next-Generation Presentation Tools
- Challenging the Presentation Paradigm (in 6 minutes, 40 seconds): Pecha Kucha by Jason B. Jones
- Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Tips in particular, the three sections, ‘Organization & Preparation Tips’, ‘Delivery Tips’ and ‘Slide Tips’.
- Seth’s Blog: Really Bad Powerpoint
Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/
- iTune
- Audacity (For PC and Mac (Garage Band is also popular on Mac)
- Skype
- Wordle
- Slideshare
- Zoho Presentation (part of collaboration/project mgmt suite)
- Prezi (3 lessons)
- Jing
- Ustream
- Elluminate (virtual conferencing, now called BB Collaborate, free version supports up to 3 people)
Further Resources or Tools worth checking:
- PechaKucha 20×20 (can find great examples of PechaKucha presentations)
- Screencast-0-Matic (another easy to use and free screen casting tools for PC and Mac)
- CamStudio (free alternative to Camtasia, from Techsmith, now PC & Mac)
- Talkshoe (community call voice chat)
- Flickr Slideshow (Search Google for Flickr Slideshow. Changes were made and multiple options exist)
- Spresent (Window flash animation)
- Glogster (graphic blog community) (what it is)
- Livestream
- TodaysMeet (free live stream space)
- Poll Everywhere (well, we all know popular texting poll)
- Podcasting with Windows Media Player by Jake Ludington
- Create a Podcast with Blogger (YouTube Video, 2:26 min, worth checking. Can publish to iTune)
- JuiceReceiver - a media aggregator which automatically downloads podcasts and media files to your computer or portable device
- Educating the Net Generation: Chapter 7, Convenience, Communications, and Control: How Students Use Technology (for more comprehensive info on tech/web/mobile use, see the Pew research link on the left)
- YouTube Annotations (how to tutorial)
- YouTube Launches Auto-Captioning for Videos by Ben Parr (short video about captioning for hearing impaired is worth checking)
- If #2 above looks good, please check a counter perspective on YouTube’s auto-captioning feature: Sorry, Google, YouTube Captions Aren’t for the Deaf. They’re for Your Robots by Xander Becket
- Viddler (commenting and tagging video contents to improve search and share)
- Combine instead of creating one (15 top notch tools and another great list and 10 free tools for education)
- Four promising tools (Storify 2 min video)(another example)
- Content curation (how to mix/curate stories, blogs, news, social media, etc).
- Video curation (what it is and tips) - Tools: Yokto, Magnify, Shortform, and expect more to come.
Post your comment, please try to answer all questions concisely and to the point:
- Which tool(s) did you focus for the purpose of better and more effective content presentation? What is your thought about content curation and which tool looked most useful and promising? For effective use, what do you need to do in terms of instructional design, management, and use of media/tools? Do you think a school or workplace must actively use tools introduced in this week? Why or why not? If you are the designer or teacher, what should you consider in adoption or implementation?
28 comments:
I consistently use many of these tools, especially YouTube, iTunes, Skype, and BlogTV (a tool similar to UStream). I have not considered using many of these tools in an educational setting, however, except for YouTube. I am a strong advocate for YouTube in the classroom. For a couple classes I have been required to produce a few videos on a particular topic to enhance my understanding, and I definitely see the benefits. When producing a video, one must consider multiple things. A student must not only research the material, but consider how to best present it to an audience. By doing so, they must create a viable script, scout out locations or images to best support their points visually, and edit the video together. Additionally, the production process usually ends in the presentation of the video, enhancing an individual's public speaking skills. Unfortunately, many K-12 schools ban the use of YouTube. For the time being, TeacherTube may serve as an alternative. However, like Richardson, I believe YouTube should be allowed for free use in the K-12 environment. Teachers will be forced to instruct their students on how to best filter through YouTube's various contents teaching students vital media/digital literacy skills.
Jing would have to be one of my favorite new tool this week. I think that it is an interesting addition to screen capturing and recording not to mention it’s free. I have tried cam studio before using this one and it is a great program but it is also very limited. When I used Jing, I noticed more options for uploading to the web and higher resolution than Cam Studio. The program has a visually pleasing display and menu that is sleek. I can see myself using this tool to do tutorials online at some point in my career as an instructional designer. This tool is a great teaching tool for anyone who wants to show someone how to do anything on the computer and upload it to a blog, YouTube, or anywhere else the tutorial is needed. I own both a Mac and a pc, which makes using certain programs, a problem. Jing is used on both the Mac and PC platforms so I can use the program with both computers unlike Cam Studio, which only works with PC.
The tool that my group observed this week was Skype. I have been a user of Skype for a little over a year now and I have to say that it is probably my favorite tool that we have gotten to discuss thus far in this class. Skype has a lot of features to offer and is very simple to learn how to use. Some of the main features include the ability to have video chats for free and the ability to buy minutes for a monthly price and use it as your primary phone. The video chat feature can without a doubt be implemented into a education or a business setting. The feature can be used to aid students by means of distance learning. In terms of using it for a business it can be used to conduct a conference call with more than one person, which could help to be beneficial in terms of selling a product. I believe that there should be a place for Skype in classroom and works scenarios in the near future.
The tools that I would use is iTunes, Skype, and one thing I would use new is Jing. I have experience already using iTunes and Skype, but I prefer to use them for my own benefits. Jing on the other hand is really useful, because you can a take a screen capturing of something and upload it to web or video. I can see myself using this tool for the future
The tools that I currently use are iTunes, Skype, and UStream. My favorite of them is iTunes and that is only because I use it the most. I use iTunes to sync my iPod and iPad. I also use it to keep up to date on new movies and music that is coming out. I really don't think that I will be adopting any of the other tools at this time. I believe that Skype and UStream will be very useful for the classroom. They both could be applied to distance learning. With Skype everyone can see everyone and talk to one another. On UStream people can talk to thousands of people at one time and then the video can be rewatched at a later time. Also if the teacher was not able to make it to the class he/she could record them self for the class to watch.
This week my group covered YouTube as an educational tool. YouTube is my favorite tool we covered this week and the only one I'm really familiar with as I use it regularly. I've used Skype a few times but am not a regular user by any means. I thought it was interesting to find out some of the ways that many teachers still make use of YouTube in the classroom despite it being blocked. I've used YouTube to look up tutorials/instructions on many subjects for as long as I can remember and I believe that there must be some sort of agreement or solution that K-12 schools could reach. If not K-12 educators are not only being handicapped by the lack of a tool that their students are knowledgeable of, and because of that are likely to adopt as learning tool in addition to using it for entertainment.
Excellent postings - observation of promises are great. Things that are essential to address when any of these are considered are: filtering/policy by the institution and numbers of learners in class - instructor role and effectiveness are greatly affected. Many places block or have to filter some tools for reasons, Skype or video sites are those discussed a lot. All in all, this week points to the importance of team work and proactive planning and administration if web 2.0 integration is an important goal or strategy in any institution.
I really like Ustream is a really good tool that can be integrated in education. I think this tool would be perfect for online classes, that way a teacher can show the week lessons and the students could just watch it live. Video curation would definitely be beneficial when you want to show your audience main points and ideas of your frequent videos you just saw instead of doing a sloppy job in a lecture clicking through the video to the part you want them to see. So the students will not lose attention and can stay focus to the lecture. Also helps the instructor also focus on what they are teaching. For effective use just make the lecture interesting and short because Students are only focused for so long before they do not care anymore. As mentioned before online class would be perfect for these tools. Business as well; for example if the CEO overseas like Japan, and wants to hold a meeting. They can hold a conference use a tool such as UStream broadcast their presentation live and go on with their day. As long as their audience can receive internet connection then it is all good. Ustream is the only tool I really have experience on so I would implement it on lectures. I would personally say YouTube is my favorite streaming site because it is easy to use and almost anybody with access to internet goes to YouTube. I also have lots and lots of experience with YouTube.
I did my review on iTunes. iTunes is a very powerful tool. Combined with other programs, this can be a very useful tool in the educational field. Particularly, iTunes U has a huge database and ability to further aid students in learning about a certain topic. If you are looking for more information about a certain topic, iTunes U has many podcasts from different universities around the world waiting to be listened to. This is a very easy way to get educated with correct knowledge, instead of searching the web hoping it's true. In a previous class I took, the teacher videoed his computer screen and added audio from all his class lessons. This allowed those who missed the class to be able to actually see what we did. It's also a way to go back if you missed something, or didn't understand. It's a very useful tool for further educating students. It's easy to manage, control, and give students access to the information.
Wordle is a fun tool that can have many uses. Teachers could use it to help younger kids understand the meaning of some words or as a way some students could summarize their reading. Words can be created from many sources or your own mind and you can play with how you want them to look. Words are a part of everyday life so Wordle can get people more involved with words and show them how much they use certain words as they are emphasized in the word cloud. Even in the work place employers might want to emphasize cleanliness or some other aspect. They could create a word cloud and put words like clean, wash, hands, disinfect, and germs.
SlideShare would have to be one of my favorite new tool this week. It is the world's largest community for sharing presentation . It is one of the best presentation platforms that has ever been created online . It is a MUST for every educator to be familiar with this tool . It not only allows you to create awesome presentations with a mixture of videos and slides but also engage you into a great community of people who share the same interests as you do . I have collected everything you need to know about Slideshare in the lab website(idt351) under week 10 so that you would find it easy to start exploring it .
I believe that youtube is the best because it allows you to create movies. i believe this is the best presentation provider. i believe iTunes is the best for curation this is because it is linked with many other pieces of software, and we are able to share our projects with avast group of people. i believe Skype is the tool best used in instructional design because we are able to talk from around the world with anyone we want and we are able to look them in the eye and example what they are doing. i believe that we do need to include these tools that we talked about this week they are very useful, and can be used in a variety of different ways that may of us don't know. i would consider adopting these tools into my work.
I focused on Blackboard Collaborate, also known as Elluminate.
I really don’t know that I can say that any tool looked like it would work best. Sure, I would like to say that Blackboard Collaborate is the best, but I can’t really say that. Every tool has its strengths. For instance, Blackboard Collaborate allows people to come together and hold their own little conference, complete with a whiteboard (Blackboard, huh) to show things on. That’s great! The problem is that you do not always need all that stuff. You might be able to make due with a Skype call and lose nothing you need for your content. Slideshare is another good one to look at. Users place their presentations on the site, and other people are able to go through and find what they need. Furthermore, these are slides, and may be gone through at your own pace. Prezi is good for slides as well, but it is meant more for showing the presentation than delivering it. And if you only have audio, why do you need something fancy? You can just use iTunes. The best tool is determined by the situation in which it is to be used; you probably do not want to use a racecar on the interstate, nor do you want a dump truck in a major race.
To use these tools effectively, you need to first know how to use them. Once you know that, you can prepare your material. Find out what you need and how you need to present it. Prepare it as needed. Don’t bloat it just because the tool will allow you to do cool things. Finally, once it has been implemented, make sure the learners know how to use it and what to use it for. Really, I say something like this every time you ask, and I would like for you to explain more what you want out of this. Thanks.
These tools are not currently needed, but it is moving towards that, so schools- and workplaces- should implement them soon. People are moving more towards this kind of thing every day, and, if you do not adopt this kind of tool, you are liable to fall behind.
Analysis of strengths and potential benefits, and how to use the selected tool is great from many: UStream (Omoruyi), iTune (Haley), SlideShare (Hasinah), YouTube/Skype (Eric). These tools have picked up a lot of resources and people who share similar interests, so can be a safe choice to enrich content presentation. Interesting post by Chelsea – yes, number one reason group or collaboration work succeeds or fails is to create a common understanding of the goal, so Wordle can be a great tool for that purpose. Probably, if I have to choose the best comment, it goes to Jake – goals and strategies first before tools. His post clarifies why simplicity and outcome are two most important things, and tech is just means to ends.
With these positives noted, two things. One, many tools have restrictions in maximum number or file size to be checked for full scale adoption – actual cost can go up. Second, more media rich the tool is, more tech support as well as academic support (by teachers, coach, tutor, resource pages, etc.) are a must (thus time and resources should be incorporated into planning and design/development.
The tool my group used for this week was Garageband. Besides the obvious use of creating music without using actual instruments, Garageband can also be used to create audio recordings, these recording can be enhanced with music that fades in or out, as well as allowing multiple tracks to play at once, with or without overlap. A means this could be used in an educational setting is perhaps by interviewing an expert in a specific field of study then sharing that interview with your students. As always a school or institution is in no way obligated to use this tool, but making learning more interesting has never been a detrimental practice in the field of education. If I was a designer or teacher I would love to find someway or method to integrate anything that makes learning more of a hands on experience as much as possible. The education model of the information is at the front of the room, has been proven to be no longer effective.
My group focused on the tool Jing to improve content presentation. This is a great tool because it is free and is available on both Mac and PC. This is also a simple tool. I think if you search the web for one topic often, content curation is a useful thing to use. I know Storify is more popular but I liked the look of Pearltrees. I don’t know how popular it is but I thought it was cool how you can build you personalized “pearl trees” and move them the way you think they should be organized. I really like to have everything in specific folders so I like the idea of organizing the way I want it. You can also find other peoples trees that are topic you like ad add them to our tree. This is a quick way to build your library up fast with topics that interest you. For Jing, you will need to have some management skills as you can only record for five minutes at a time. You could use another program to stitch them together if you needed to. I think school and workplaces could benefit from using these types of programs for training and instruction. Instead of holding meeting, people can view these training videos at their desk or at home. One of the biggest things to consider is cost and time for implementation of these tools.
The tool our group focused on and studied this week was Jing. Jing is a screen capturing and video recording tool used to capture images and videos of your choosing. It is an interesting tool to use because of its easy use and it is also free to use. Other screen capturing tools in my opinion are not as good or efficient as Jing because they can be to complex where as Jing is very straight forward with its instructions. I will definitely use this tool from now on as I occasionally do save screenshot images for classes or just for my own use. This tools can be very useful for anyone looking to create tutorials or just save some information you just read or stumbled upon. Jing is not only just a mac tool as it works just as well on PC. Implementing this tool in the classroom is a great idea for young students looking to design tutorials or just upload specific videos to a blog or website.
The tool I focused on for the purpose of better and more effective content presentation was Prezi. I believe that content curation is important because collecting the most recent and relevant information will provide learners a more useful and meaningful experience. I believe that Prezi is a useful tool and holds great potential. I say this because it already has a large user base, and has already been recognized by great educational influences, such as TED. It does something that no other presentation tool does, and that’s its unique ZUI design, and that in itself stimulates an audience’s attention. To use Prezi effectively, you must make sure that a slideshow presentation is the right approach to teaching the material. The fact that you can create and reuse Prezis makes it easy to manage and organize information, but you must make sure to update the content so that it is recent, relevant, and interesting the learners. Prezi is great in its ability to implement not only text, but videos and images as well, but again, those also must be recent and relevant. I believe that business and school could benefit greatly from actively using a tool like Prezi, because it’s a verily new and interesting way to present information. Prezi could be used to train employees and teach students alike, because it’s easy to use and verily inexpensive to obtain and maintain all of the premium features. If I were the designer/teacher I would consider how much time it would take to create a Prezi, the cost, and whether or not it’s worth creating something that I would not reuse. I could see myself using Prezi to present information that rarely is updated, such as science laws or even history lessons, because then it could be used cheaply and not take much time at all due to the fact I can reuse it.
My group focused on Jing!, a tool that takes screen capture and screen recordings. As a screen capture tool, it offers a few more features than Mac and Windows proprietary screen capture applications. You can highlight sections of the image, add text, and arrows to call attention to certain parts of the image.
As a screen recording tool, it's somewhat lacking. It limits your recordings to five minutes a piece. It also exports recordings as swf files. This means you'll have to import your recording into another program like Camtasia if you want to use it in a service like Youtube.
I'm not saying that I wouldn't use this application. It's great for adding direction and instructions to pngs. I could have saved a few steps in tutorials from this semester with this program. Rather than taking a screen capture and importing it into Photoshop to highlight an area or add arrows, I could have performed those steps using only Jing!. If I'm recording my screen for a video though, I'd have to use Jing! and Camtasia. I'd also be limited to 5 minutes per chunk of video, so I'd have to consider that as I edited multiple parts.
Jing! is free, though, which makes it accessible. You just have to consider that it will spit out an swf.
The tool that my group focused on was TodaysMeet. A teacher can easily create rooms for students to join. The students can join from their home or from another school. The rooms can be opened for a little while or can be opened longer for longer discussion.
I think that schools should implement TodaysMeet. TodaysMeet will help with long discussions out side of a class setting and as students find more information they can add that to the discussion later on if the room is still open.
If I were a teacher I would consider in implementing this tool would be that do any of these subjects need more discussion. Also do the students have access to the proper equipment to use this program.
This weeks focus was on TodaysMeet, a backchannel that allows for people to communicate with each other. What I liked about this tool is that it had a simple layout that was easy to use and allowed for inviting others to participate just as easy. It reminded me of a chat room, but instead of just general conversation, it is used more for learning and teaching purposes. TodaysMeet does not have to be just a classroom activity, it can be used anywhere on a computer or mobile device, as long as there is not a short set time limit. TodaysMeet allows for inviting anyone you want to particpate in discussions and allows people to respond annonymously if they'd like. What is neat about this is, people can answer however they want without holding back or being judged on their answers. I would consider using this tool in the classroom not only for the reasons above but for the fact that this tool prevents interuptions from students who have a question during an important presentation or discussion that the teacher can answer when finished, or another student can answer before hand.
The tool that I focused on was Prezi which I feel is a very useful and creative tool. It takes a typical power point and makes it more unique and fun to use. It is fairly easy to use the tool and you can use if for free. The first time that I heard of it was a few years ago when a teacher used it for a presentation and I thought it was really cool and made me want to pay attention more to what was in the presentation. This is a reason why I feel that this is a effective tool to present with since it will be more likely to get peoples attention rather than a normal power point presentation. I think that if more teachers used this tool it would be very beneficial because it'll catch more peoples attention.
The tool that our group focused this week was Garageband. Garageband is a software application that allows users to create music or podcasts. It allow users to create multiple tracks with voice recordings and an array of different instrumental effects. I think that a school should use this tool for educational purposes. Students can use this tool to produce an original soundtrack for a documentary movie for history, create a podcast about an experiment, or record a narration for a slideshow.
The tool the the group focused on for the purpose of better content presentation was GarageBand. GarageBand is a multitrack, you can record one instrument at a time, record real audio pieces, play with software instruments, create parts using Apple Loops, add effects, mix your music and play it all back with iTunes or include in iMovies.
It is an easy to use but powerful recording tool for musicians, podcasters, presenters, students or anyone that wants professional sounding audio. Using the Inspector audio can be embedded into websites, keynote presentations, pages documents and imovie. i think using GarageBand can be useful for for distance learning. By Providing online discussions and lectures using a voice recording that is sent to the student would engage them and would facilitate learning for distance learners and would help them to understand the materials much better.
Combined, great info about Jing Kathryn, Garrett, and Jim. Same for the Garageband. It can help more hands-on and active learning (Ken, Lucia) as well as more effective instruction (Asmaa). Prezi will stand out for more visual and attention grabbing presentation (Melissa) Can't agree more with Courtney - excellent points about cost and reuse consideration that must be in place first before design or development, and that simple q, is presentation the best? That is a billion dollar (if not million) question!
Todaysmeet sound very interesting. It might fit better as a tool for next week (personal and social network), but surely can enhance presentation. If college or adult learners, supervision or monitoring can be less, if K12 school, most schools will control, but adaptation can be made so that only allowed can join or rooms led by co-teachers, etc.
Last but not least, can't emphasize more about value of leaning actively (hands-on) and with/from others (community). These tools can and should be used for such goals, not the other way around~
The tool my group used was Prezi. I've used Prezi before in high school and at the time, I believed it was just an online form of power point. I still partly believe that today, but now after using it a lot more, it has a few advantages. First, I would say that it's far more customizable than power point is. The other thing is that once you're done with your Prezi, it can automatically be published onto the web. It's not as easy with power point, as with the newest version they took away the ability to export to HTML. I could also see Prezi getting used in professional environments for presentations as well.
What is the maximum number of minutes of presentation that people are comfortable viewing and focusing on?
Post a Comment