Posts Tagged ‘presentation’

The difference between ‘crowdsourcing’ and being lazy.

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I'm currently in Turkey with Nick Dennis presenting about technology to History educators at the request of EUROCLIO. Resources (in Turkish!) here...

Crowd

Image CC BY-NC-SA Samuel Stroube @ Flickr

I don’t usually get involved with things explicitly concerned with education in the USA. But there’s been one issue recently that prompted me to reflect on a wider concern: the difference between ‘crowd-sourcing’ and just being lazy.*

In fact, it’s more than being lazy. It’s taking a concept and twisting it for your own ends to look like you’re doing something you’re not. It’s an attempted shortcut to being seen as ‘innovative’. It’s bandwagon-jumping instead of hitchhiking. :-(

The current Wikipedia definition of ‘crowdsourcing’:

Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. Problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users—also known as the crowd—typically form into online communities, and the crowd submits solutions. The crowd also sorts through the solutions, finding the best ones.

When done well, the results can be outstanding. Take, for example, The Guardian’s decision to open up and make available the 700,000 documents involved in the UK MP expenses scandal. They received over 20,000 responses highlighting irregularities.

However, crowdsourcing is something that can be done very badly and for the wrong reasons. Take, for example ISTE’s decision to ‘crowdsource’ the Keynote speech for its 2010 conference. On the face of it, and for those involved with ISTE, the idea must look cutting-edge and innovative. It’s got a Digg-like voting system for proposals and has created a buzz about the conference on Twitter and blogs. However, although it looks as if it’s ‘empowering’ people, it’s actually doing the opposite.

As Miguel Guhlin points out,

…I’m tired of hitching my carriage behind some writer’s idea of what could be in business but is designed for education since they’re the chosen keynoter. While research may say something, the fact is, research has been speaking up for years in school change and reform…and you know what? People aren’t listening.

Go and read Miguel’s post in full, but to summarize it briefly here, he says that expecting a keynote to change things at the coalface means putting faith in the following process:

  1. Educators go away and learn how to use a tool to the extent that it becomes part of their practice.
  2. The tool is appropriate to use within the context of their school and educators are free to use it as they wish.
  3. Educators are able to get their school leadership onboard and stay at the institution long enough to make a difference.
  4. Parents offer little or no resistence to flattening the walls of the classroom through the use of Web 2.0 tools.

Put in that way, it’s clear that ISTE’s decision is far from revolutionary. As Miguel states, it’s time for a ‘radical reboot’ in national and interational approaches to innovation in education. Isn’t it ironic that we use a lecture format to encourage teachers to be innovative and move away from such a format? ;-)

So if you’re a leader and are looking to be innovative, please do look about you to see what others are doing. But once you’ve done that, go back and think about what the objectives of your organization/business/conference/whatever actually are. Then see if the process/innovation/tool that you’ve come across is appropriate. Ask yourself if you’re going through the process/using the tool for the right reasons.

Do you know of any other examples of thinly-disguised laziness?

* That thinking was started by reading Charles Leadbeater’s We-Think: mass innovation, not mass production (my review forthcoming)

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Pure gold nuggets from Shirky

I’ve recently finished reading Clay Shirky’s excellent book Here Comes Everybody. If you’re new to social media it explains why it’s important; if you’re not, it equips you to explain its importance to others. A must read!

Below are some quotations from the book in a Flickr set that will eventually grow to include quotations from other authors… :-p

HOWTO: Present using Cooliris (the basics…)

Regular readers of this blog and followers of my tweets will be aware that I’ve recently come across (via Alan Levine 1, 2) a great way to present to an audience using a plugin for the Open Source, cross-platform web browser Firefox.* Cooliris makes your presentations look like an interactive version of this:

(examples available in the Presentations section)

Why use Cooliris as a presentation method?

  • It looks extremely cool and engages your audience
  • It generates HTML pages for your images so you can quickly and easily put your presentation slides online
  • It’s free (if you use something like OpenOffice.org to create your images)
  • It can be controlled using a Nintendo Wiimote (I use Darwiin Remote with my Macbook Pro)

The purpose of this post is to show how to create a basic presentation with Cooliris, and then how to enable the more advanced features. :-D

Cooliris: the basics

The basic steps are: export your slides as images, import them into PicLens Publisher, and then upload generated folder to web server (optional, as you can run it locally from your hard disk)

1. Export your slides as images

Keynote (click to enlarge):

Keynote - Export (thumb) Keynote - filetype (small)

Powerpoint (click to enlarge):

Powerpoint - Save as Pictures Powerpoint - Image options

OpenOffice.org (click to enlarge):

OpenOffice.org - Export OpenOffice.org - export format openoffice03_small

OpenOffice.org - HTML format OpenOffice.org - JPG quality Create

As far as I’m aware, although the options would suggest otherwise, there’s no obvious way to export all you slides to images in OpenOffice.org. Instead, we can generate them by creating an HTML version of the presentation which will also create images. As a bonus, this can be uploaded alongside the Cooliris version of the slides for those without the plugin. :-)

2. Use PicLens Publisher

Cooliris used to be known as ‘PicLens’ – hence the name of PicLens Publisher, a Mac/Windows program that does everything you need to convert your images ready for an interactive Cooliris-powered presentation!

Simply follow the instructions given to you in the program:

PicLens Publisher

Once you’ve finished, go to the folder that you exported your files to and open gallery.html in Firefox (with the Cooliris add-on). You should see an interactive presentation like the ones I produced!

3. Upload your files to a web server (optional)

If you want your presentation to be online, do the following:

  1. Rename the folder containing your PicLens Publisher-created files to something without spaces (e.g. preso)
  2. Rename gallery.html within the preso folder to index.html
  3. Connect to your web server and navigate to where you want the preso folder uploaded to
  4. Upload the preso folder generated by PicLens Publisher to your web server

Upload preso to web server

That’s it! You’ve created your first Cooliris-powered, interactive presentation. Details on how link to websites from your slides, name them, customize the icon at the top, and use a Wiimote to present will feature in a follow up post. :-)

* Cooliris is also available for Internet Explorer and Safari, but I’m not entirely sure why you’d want to use those… ;-)

Raising achievement in History at KS4 using e-learning

SHP 2009 slides

Click here to go straight to the slides

I’m at the annual Schools History Project Conference for the fifth time this weekend and am presenting for the third time. This is the first time that I’ll be presenting without my partner in crime, Nick Dennis, as he’s unable to make the conference. It’s a shame, but it means I can focus entirely on what I did with my Year 10 History class this academic year at my previous school.

I’ve used the Cooliris presentation method, pioneered by Alan Levine, and which I piloted in my Open Source School presentation earlier this month. I’m not so sure he uses a Nintendo Wiimote (along with Darwiin Remote) with Cooliris, though. It’s an excellent presentation method – and free if you create your slides in OpenOffice.org (as I do!) :-D

The easiest way to share the link directly to the slides that go with this presentation is to go to:

http://bit.ly/SHP2009

Links (in order mentioned) to the websites mentioned in the presentation can be found below:

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Posted: July 3rd, 2009
Categories: Education, Technology
Tags: , , , , , ,
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Open Source Schools – Open Source Software: an overview

Cooliris wall

Click here to jump straight to the presentation

I’m down at Felsted School, Essex, tomorrow at the invitation of my good friend and conspirator collaborator, Nick Dennis. The Heads of ICT departments from independent schools in the area get together every so often to share and discuss ideas. I’ve been asked to do a presentation on Open Source Software – presumably because I’m involved in the Becta-funded Open Source Schools project. :-)

Although I’ve tinkered with Prezi as a presentation tool in the past, I’ve decided I’m not a big fan as it’s a bit clunky and slow when putting your presentation together. It’s also completely ‘closed’ meaning that not only is it against the underpinning of the presentation, but other people (including me in future!) can’t re-use elements of your presentation.

A few months ago I read Alan Levine’s post Tricking out Cooliris as a presentation tool. I thought it looked cool, forgot to experiment, and then forgot about it. That is until last week when I saw that Alec Couros and Dean Shareski had used the method in their presentation entitled 2 guys. Suitably impressed, I decided to have a go. :-p

It all looked very complicated at first until I discovered that Cooliris have a program called PicLens Publisher that does all the hard work for you. All you need to do is save your presentation as a series of images, drag-and-drop the images onto PicLens Publisher and it produces the HTML page and RSS feed required.

Once that was done, all I needed to do was customize the HTML page and upload the folder via FTP to my website. Done! :-D

Update: Dai Barnes captured the audio using his Livescribe. Check it out here!

HOWTO: Present full-screen using Prezi and an Apple Remote [OSX]

Prezi - Apple RemotePowerpoint is dead. Well, at least if you want to impress people. Over at elearnr.org I’ve done a quick overview for ways in which you can present using different methods. One of these is the wonderful Prezi.

For an example of what Prezi looks like in practice, check out a sample one I used in a lesson here: http://prezi.com/5619/

As part of an interview I’ve got this week I need to do a presentation. I’m using a large image and zooming in on various parts of it during the presentation; Prezi is perfect for this!

Whilst I could use my iPhone and AirMouse to do this, it depends upon a laptop and the iPhone being on the same wi-fi network. I can’t guarantee that there will be wi-fi, so need something else. I began wondering whether I could use the Apple Remote I’ve got with my Macbook Pro. I found the answer tucked away at the bottom of this thread, but whilst it’s not hard, it’s not immediately straightforward.

Here’s what to do….

5 steps to presenting full-screen using Prezi and an Apple Remote

1. Download your Prezi presentation:

Prezi - download presentation

2. Download and install iRed Lite, a free program that remaps your Apple Remote to allow you to use it in the same way as a mouse.

3. Open iRed Lite and choose the option ‘Mouse Control’ in the drop-down menu to the bottom-left of the window:

iRed Lite - Mouse Control

4. Hold down the Menu button on your Apple Remote until the iRed Lite OSD comes up. Click the centre Play/Pause button and your should be able to start using your Apple Remote to control the cursor!

iRed Lite OSD

5. Unzip and open the Prezi presentation you downloaded* and press Apple-F to go fullscreen (it’s also on the View menu). Place the cursor over the ‘next’ button in Prezi using the trackpad or mouse, as the speed of movement with the Apple Remote is rather small. Clicking the Play/Pause button on the Apple Remote should now enable you to move forward through your presentation. :-D

Prezi - controls

* If you want to present directly from the Prezi website, you’ll need a full-screen web browser. Plainview is a good, free option for this task. :-)

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Posted: March 21st, 2009
Categories: Technology
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Alternative ways of presenting content and information to pupils

alternative_presentation_large

Powerpoint and other slideshow-based forms of presentation can be useful. They certainly have a place in my teaching. But variation is the spice of life and certainly helps in terms of pupils being able to remember important information they may need for examinations, etc.

If you just want cool ways of jazzing up your exisiting Powerpoint, then you could try CoolIris or Rich Chart Live. If, however, you’d like a different way of presenting, keep reading!

In what follows I’d like to take you through three tools that should help liven up your presentations. They are:

  1. Glogster
  2. Prezi
  3. Animoto


Glogster


glogster
The best way to describe Glogster is that it’s like an online, multimedia poster. It’s very easy to use and, as it can be made to display full-screen, making it an ideal presentational tool. You can add (hyperlinked) text as well as embedding images, video and audio. The added bonus is that it’s already online for your pupils to see when they get home! :-)

An example of a very basic ‘glog’ is this one I created to show my pupils how it was done. They did a much better job – for example this one by Merrick S.


Prezi


prezi
At the time of writing, Prezi is currently in ‘private beta mode’, meaning you have to request a login by signing up. In practice, it only takes a couple of days before you get your account.

Like Glogster, Prezi allows you to embed multimedia objects such as images and video (in the form of .flv files – try KissYouTube.com). Describing itself as ‘the zooming presentation editor’, Prezi is like a giant canvas upon which you focus in on various parts.

Prezi can be viewed, and collaborated upon, online – but each presentation can also be downloaded for use offline. Perfect if your network connection is less than 100% guaranteed! :-)

Here’s a very straightforward Prezi I created on the League of Nations to show you the style.


Animoto



Animoto is an easy video creation tool. It ‘feels’ your music and presents the images you upload to it in time with the beat. Animoto has recently become a lot more powerful in that you can now add text. It is therefore now useful as a story-telling tool, and especially as a ‘hook’ for pupils at the start of a lesson!

I created the above video last month to entice Year 9 to choose the new Vocational GCSE in History!

Posted: March 3rd, 2009
Categories: interactive whiteboard
Tags: , , , , ,
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Skype Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Nick Dennis and I are at the Schools History Project Conference this weekend. We’re doing a couple of sessions entitled Skype Captain and the World of Tomorrow: using new technologies to promote collaboration beyond the classroom. The page which goes with our session is at:

dougbelshaw.com/blog/shp

If all goes well, we’re planning to broadcast the second session (10.30am BST, Sunday 6th July 2008) live over the Internet via UStream. The broadcast will appear in the box below and at this URL and will be recorded for later viewing. :-)

Reflections on BETT 2008

Further to my previous posts this week, I’ve been at BETT 2008 this week. I don’t like it on other edublogs when people endlessly bang on about conferences/events I haven’t been able to attend, so this will be my last post on it – I promise! :-)

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My Seminar at BETT

BETT

I’m looking forward to attending BETT (British Educational Technology and Training) Show tomorrow as a visitor, and as a speaker with Futurelab on Saturday. I’m part of their Teachers as Innovators programme – you can read the interview I did last year here.

(more…)

Posted: January 10th, 2008
Categories: Education
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
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