Why ALL Learners Need Laptops NOW! (SlideShare Slidecast)

Yesterday during our second class of “Computers in the Classroom” for pre-service teachers at the University of North Texas, I showed students the 20×20 Pecha Kucha presentation model. Unfortunately (as you might notice at the start of this Slidecast) I STILL have trouble pronouncing it correctly: “Peh-cha kuh-cha.” This model involves the use of twenty different slides, which automatically advance in PowerPoint (or another presentation software program, like Keynote or Open Office Impress) every twenty seconds. This means your presentation is finished in six minutes and forty seconds. I created the following Pecha Kucha model presentation on, “Why ALL Learners Need Laptops NOW!” I recorded the audio using a Sony UX820 digital recorder, and uploaded the raw/unedited audio to SlideShare to make this into a Slidecast. This is synchronized, so you can advance the presentation and play the audio track at a specific point, or play the entire thing and allow it to auto-advance. Slideshare is free to use, but does offer a paid/professional account option with more features. I’m on the free plan.

I brainstormed the outline for this presentation the previous day, and used the website Compfight to find copyright-friendly images to use in the presentation. Some of these I had previously found and saved as “favorites” on my Flickr account. In class, we used my wiki page, “Talk with Media – Using Copyright-Friendly Images” to learn how to use Compfight in this way. I also recorded a five minute screencast tutorial for my students about how to use Compfight to find Creative Commons images for a presentation using Screenr, and linked this from our course Pecha Kucha assignment page.

Students Wednesday enjoyed viewing Don McMillan’s GREAT “Life After Death by PowerPoint” YouTube video during class, as we discussed WHY we need to take a more “PresentationZen” approach to presentations. Garr Reynolds‘ August 21st post, “A long time ago, before death by PowerPoint,” cleverly uses a Star Wars analogy to also make this point.

When I brainstormed my outline for “Why ALL Learners Need Laptops NOW!” I was a few points short. I created a shared Google Document which allowed others to edit it without signing in to Google. The following ten people added fourteen more great ideas to the list I started.

Al Steeves, Rothesay, New Brunswick, Canada
Chris O’Neal, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA
Terry Kaminski, Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada
Trisha Andersen, Loveland, Colorado, USA
Mike Renne, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
Jeannie Chiasson, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
Camilla Elliott, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
T. Lewis, New Brunswick, Canada
Pam Lowe, Missouri, USA
Kurt Paccio, Nazareth, Pennsylvania, USA

Global collaboration can be inspiring, and it certainly was for me personally in this case!

I love sharing both the Presentation Zen approach to presentations as well as the Pecha Kucha model with educators. For more about this, see the following posts from last Spring:

1. What I Hope You Learned (A Technology 4 Teachers Pecha Kutcha Presentation) – 28 April 2010
2. An Exemplary Scribe Blog Post, Pecha Kutcha Presentation, and Screencast – 30 April 2010

Technorati Tags:
classroom, edtech, pecha, powerpoint, presentation, kucha, zen, garr, reynolds, unt, cic, computers

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On this day..

• Lessons Learned with Website eBook eCommerce Continue (August 2018) – 2018
• Interview with Author & Screenswriter Rene Gutteridge – 2015
• A Case Study: How NOT to Set Up a WordPress Site – 2011
• Creating a course audio lecturecast (podcast) with Podcast Generator – 2010
• What questions do you have about copyright? – 2009
• Proposed Fall Conference Sessions – 2009
• Believe in your students, colleagues, and believe in yourself – 2008
• Darfur Issues highlighted via a student-created Southpark style video – 2008
• Copyright and recording full-length library books – 2008
• Measuring engagement – 2007