Eventually everyone will know and use the techniques shown here. Until then I will have to fix files that come with textbooks.
For far too long I tried to fix textbook slides by removing extraneous stuff like headers and footers, changing the background to a solid color, removing bullets, turning the title into complete sentence, and adding a graphic to illustrate the concept in the title.
This seems to take much more work and time than the way I do it now mainly because of the way publishers create the slides. Often even if I change the slide master I still have to work with each slide to fix certain elements.
Now I start with a template, save the file as a new presentation and then copy any useful graphics to slides. Then I build the other slides adding a title and graphic to each.
The template has all the few things I need: a solid background, no header or footer, and fonts the right size so everyone can read the titles no matter where they are in the room.
Sometimes I copy the bullets and change them into sentences to add to the speaker notes, but it is often faster to add my thoughts than to work with the bullets.
I work with the textbook to cover the most important concepts in the chapter and try to use different language than that in the book. Hopefully the students will better learn the material if they can see it presented in more than one way.
Thoughts?
John
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
PowerPoints Posted @ Innovations 2010
If you click the title of this post you will go to the innovations site and can see all the PowerPoint files for the presentations this year.
It is a snapshot of where we are this year not only in how we use PowerPoint but also what teachers are interested in.
Check it out!
Thoughts?
John
It is a snapshot of where we are this year not only in how we use PowerPoint but also what teachers are interested in.
Check it out!
Thoughts?
John
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Getting text into speaker notes
Now we know not to put much text on a slide--just one complete sentence (if you have any text on it at all) and the sentence should be short.
But we need to get text into the speaker notes so what is the best way to do that?
You can type it in.
You can use the student solution: copy and paste.
You can talk and let the computer type it in for you. If you have Windows Vista or 7 then it comes with a very good speech recognition program. It is superb at allowing you to control your computer and pretty good at entering text. And it gets better the more training you do.
You have to teach the program to understand the way you talk. And you have to learn how to use the program.
Even better than Windows speech recognition is Dragon Naturally Speaking. Clicking the title of this post will take you to the New York Times review by David Pogue.
Dragon is not free (the price has fallen since it came out) but there is an academic discount for teachers and students. It is much better at entering text. And you still have to learn it and teach it your voice.
However you enter your speaker notes, ideally you will enter your thoughts and not just what the textbook says. This will give students a second way of looking at the material.
Thoughts?
John
But we need to get text into the speaker notes so what is the best way to do that?
You can type it in.
You can use the student solution: copy and paste.
You can talk and let the computer type it in for you. If you have Windows Vista or 7 then it comes with a very good speech recognition program. It is superb at allowing you to control your computer and pretty good at entering text. And it gets better the more training you do.
You have to teach the program to understand the way you talk. And you have to learn how to use the program.
Even better than Windows speech recognition is Dragon Naturally Speaking. Clicking the title of this post will take you to the New York Times review by David Pogue.
Dragon is not free (the price has fallen since it came out) but there is an academic discount for teachers and students. It is much better at entering text. And you still have to learn it and teach it your voice.
However you enter your speaker notes, ideally you will enter your thoughts and not just what the textbook says. This will give students a second way of looking at the material.
Thoughts?
John
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
@ Innovations 2010
My thanks to those who rose early to see the presentation yesterday and my apologies to those who could not get in to see it. I wish I had thought to leave my business cards outside the room so those who were turned away could have got to my web site and the links to this blog and the file for the PowerPoint. Next time I will know better.
I did give the file to the conference and eventually you will be able to download the file through the web site for the conference. You can get to the web site by clicking the title of this post.
I knew the room was too small but decided to not ask for a bigger one since I could not be sure that it would fill up. Even though every time I give this at a conference the room fills up. I should have asked for a bigger room. But when I thought about going to do this it seems so presumptuous.
Someone asked about the animation of the titles on my slides and when I polled the audience there were others who agreed that it was annoying. The truth is that everything you put on a slide should be there for a reason and that includes animation. I revised the slides to make the words appear faster. But I am considering removing the animation from most of the titles. Like Horatio, my philosophy needs expanding.
The name of the file on my home page is e6.pptx but if the number really reflected the number of times that I have changed it, then it would be 506. And still there is much room for improvement in it.
An opera singer once gave many encores at a concert and finally one of the audience yelled out that he had to keep it up until he got it right. I too will have to keep giving it and modifying it until I get it right.
Thoughts?
John
I did give the file to the conference and eventually you will be able to download the file through the web site for the conference. You can get to the web site by clicking the title of this post.
I knew the room was too small but decided to not ask for a bigger one since I could not be sure that it would fill up. Even though every time I give this at a conference the room fills up. I should have asked for a bigger room. But when I thought about going to do this it seems so presumptuous.
Someone asked about the animation of the titles on my slides and when I polled the audience there were others who agreed that it was annoying. The truth is that everything you put on a slide should be there for a reason and that includes animation. I revised the slides to make the words appear faster. But I am considering removing the animation from most of the titles. Like Horatio, my philosophy needs expanding.
The name of the file on my home page is e6.pptx but if the number really reflected the number of times that I have changed it, then it would be 506. And still there is much room for improvement in it.
An opera singer once gave many encores at a concert and finally one of the audience yelled out that he had to keep it up until he got it right. I too will have to keep giving it and modifying it until I get it right.
Thoughts?
John
Friday, March 26, 2010
Slideshare.net chooses the best presentations
Slideshare.net (click the title of this post to go there) picks the best presentations every year and the link will take you to the winners for 2009.
This is also a place where you can go to post your own presentation or just look at what others have done.
Go here to see what slideshare.net says about themselves.
Explore the site. I am sure you will enjoy it.
This is also a place where you can go to post your own presentation or just look at what others have done.
Go here to see what slideshare.net says about themselves.
Explore the site. I am sure you will enjoy it.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
When Office acts up
I gave the EYKAPIW presentation yesterday and imagine my grief when I could not import my outline file from Word into my template. I had tried it the night before and it worked great. But it balked during the show.
Today I ran the Microsoft Office Diagnostics and it found and repaired whatever was wrong and now it works again.
You can find this useful tool in the start menu in the Microsoft Office folder and then in a sub-folder called Microsoft Office Tools. Or just start typing diag in the search window of the start menu.
The title of this post will take you to a page where you can read more about this useful feature.
Maybe I will run it before I give the EYKAPIW presentation again.
Today I ran the Microsoft Office Diagnostics and it found and repaired whatever was wrong and now it works again.
You can find this useful tool in the start menu in the Microsoft Office folder and then in a sub-folder called Microsoft Office Tools. Or just start typing diag in the search window of the start menu.
The title of this post will take you to a page where you can read more about this useful feature.
Maybe I will run it before I give the EYKAPIW presentation again.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Slide master: secret of templates
Templates are the secret of PowerPoint to save time and make great presentations and the secret of templates is to know how to modify slide masters.
A slide master allows you to personalize the master and then all the customization will apply to all slides that use the master.
Later if you want to make a change you can make it to the slide master and all slides will get the change.
So you want to open your template and make changes to the slide master(s) and then when you finish, save the file as a template using the file extension .potx.
Then you can open the template and save it as a presentation and then add your content.
You get to slide master by choosing the View tab and choosing Slide Master. Once you open this view it will look like the image below.
Click the image to enlarge.
Microsoft has some training on slide masters here.
They also have an article Create and customize a slide master and another on Apply multiple slide masters to a new or existing presentation. And you can click the title of this post to go to learn more about slide masters.
Thoughts?
John
A slide master allows you to personalize the master and then all the customization will apply to all slides that use the master.
Later if you want to make a change you can make it to the slide master and all slides will get the change.
So you want to open your template and make changes to the slide master(s) and then when you finish, save the file as a template using the file extension .potx.
Then you can open the template and save it as a presentation and then add your content.
You get to slide master by choosing the View tab and choosing Slide Master. Once you open this view it will look like the image below.
Click the image to enlarge.
Microsoft has some training on slide masters here.
They also have an article Create and customize a slide master and another on Apply multiple slide masters to a new or existing presentation. And you can click the title of this post to go to learn more about slide masters.
Thoughts?
John
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