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For those of you who use PowerPoint (or are willing to, when it’s useful), you might consider creating a series of short slide shows that can run in automated mode as your students are entering your classroom. I’ve been doing this for several years now at conference presentations, and it works really well to get the audience engaged and warmed up as they come in and find seats. They actually start talking to each other about the session topic!

I use a combination of these kinds of things for my conference pre-presentation shows:

1. Questions and answers (a la movie trivia quizzes while you’re waiting for a movie to start)
2. Quotes related to the presentation
3. Questions without answers that make people think about issues that will be raised
4. Facts, figures, charts, or other simple data I want to reinforce

Teachers can use this to remind students of content from the previous class, or as a way to introduce content in the current class. Or perhaps as an additional reminder to students about upcoming tests or papers.

You can set up any slide show in Power Point to run automatically, and you can determine the amount of time each slide will display before the next one appears. -ELIZABETH A. EVANS

Elizabeth A. Evans works for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Information Technology Services.

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If you read Instructify every day, it’s safe to say you like finding nifty tools for your classroom. Believe it or not, there are more places than this one to find out about these resources (wait, don’t leave! Come back!).

Vicki Davis, owner of the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, is one such teacher who enjoys spreading the word about useful ed-technology. This Thursday, August 28 at 8 p.m., you can talk to her live and sort-of-in-person via Second Life in her presentation, “New School Year: Cool Tools Here.” Davis will share some of the tools and tips she (and hopefully you too) will use this coming year.

Davis’ session is part of “The Future Is Already Here,” a series of interactive professional development sessions from USDLC (you might remember their session, “BANNED in the Bookhenge” from earlier this year). The series is designed to give teachers a chance to hear from and talk with outstanding teachers who integrate technology such as Web 2.0, 1:1 computing, robotics, or serious gaming / 3D Web into their everyday teaching.

If you’re not sure about this whole social networking through Second Life thing, you can still take part through Internet radio and chat at  www.Literacy2Learn.org. USDLC plans more of these events throughout the year, so keep checking back. Isn’t it nice to know there are so many places to find out about great tech resources for teachers? All I ask is that you don’t forget about Instructify. -BILL FERRIS

Cool Cat Teacher Blog

The Future Is Already Here

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You’ve finally gotten a laptop to work with, and maybe you’ve started to use it in the classroom. Now you’re going to conferences, and you’ve heard about people “blogging” and using laptops at conferencing, but you’re wondering how to do this, and why?

First, think of blogging as a more efficient and effective way to take and share notes from your conference experience. Next, you don’t have to have or keep a blog to more effectively share what you learn. Now that we have that out of the way let’s think about this some more. You are probably being sent to that conference so that you can learn lots of new stuff, and then come back and share what you learn with others. Traditionally, you’d take handwritten notes, but unless you take shorthand, even minimal touch typing skills (I’m only a 35-50 wpm gal myself) are much more efficient than hand-writing notes. Give up the note pad, and use your laptop. In electronic form your notes can go to the whole district, and save you the awkwardness of reading your chicken scratch notes at your department meeting.

Now for the how part. I recommend this great article on blogging conferences from the TED site. As they point out, “Even if you don’t blog, it’s worth reading before your next conference, for tips on getting the most out of your time in the audience.” Here are some highlights:

1. Set up your documents in advance, and type in background links (their website, blog, who they work for, etc.) and the name of the presenter before the session.
2. Arrive early and have your physical setup (the back or somewhere near an outlet. My tip is to bring a good surge protector with a long cord - mine is eight feet long). Keep your laptop fully charged and plugged in whenever possible, so that it is ready to go should you not have power access.
3. Check in with others who are blogging or using laptops, to share notes and fill in any gaps.

But what should you use to take notes? Start with your word processing software of choice. If you are not publishing on the Web but will be emailing the notes, what I often do at district meetings is take notes in Power Point. This forces you to summarize, because if it won’t fit on one slide without reducing the font below 24 point, you are probably writing too much. Whatever you use, save often (most blogging editors have a way to save without publishing).

How do you share the information if you don’t have a blog of your own? Use your school/district LMS, email it, put a wiki page up, or put it on a Pageflake.

Now, if you are working on a blog, and expecting wifi at your conference, you may be disappointed. Some convention centers like to charge for access, some conferences (especially education technology ones) have been having their wifi overwhelmed by all of us coming in with our spiffy new wifi laptops. Do not count on having online access all the time, be prepared to type in Word now, and post and share later. -ALICE MERCER

How to blog a confeence via TED

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Photo credit: Arbron on Flickr

You may have had the opportunity to read this earlier piece on Scott Elias and how to improve Power Point presentations. Dean Shareski adds his two-cents to the discussion in YouTube - PowerPoint Extreme Makeover, which gives concrete before-and-after examples with a few helpful tips.

The highlights:

1. More high-quality visuals: use a picture to not just illustrate but to tell the story;
2. Don’t try to make your PowerPoint stand alone, your delivery counts;
3. Don’t show the text you are reading in your narration;
4. Make the text you use stand out using contrast and fonts;
5. Get a remote clicker.

Stop killing your audience’s attention and start making killer presentations with these helpful tips. -ALICE MERCER

YouTube - PowerPoint Extreme Makeover
Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? - Presenting… Me!

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You may have heard your students talking about questing or getting their epic mounts or selling bars of gold on the auction house. If you have, you’re probably dealing with a World of Warcraft player.

As a long-standing gamer and a doctoral student interested in virtual worlds and games and their potential use for teaching, I was thrilled to learn that a recent issue of Science magazine called for participation in a unique conference – one that would take place within the massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft (WoW). For three days in May, participants in the Convergence of the Real and the Virtual conference created characters and joined players from around the world to participate in scholarly discussions about the game while hanging out in a virtual world.

The conference was comprised of three sessions: one about the possibilities for research within the game, one about the relationship between the game and the “real world,” and one about the future of such virtual worlds.

I was particularly drawn to the second session because it featured both Constance Steinkuehler who researches the potential for learning and literacy in games, and Julian Dibbell, who researches cultural and sociological aspects of games. These scholars are two of my most favorite within this community. This particular session shed some light on the learning potential in games.

Steinkuehler believes there’s serious learning and knowledge creation that occurs as a result of playing WoW. For instance one conference participant related a story about how his son wanted to find a specific pet within the game (yes, players can have virtual pets in the game) and spent several hours researching how to find and obtain such a pet. This example uniquely illustrates the development of critical thinking, research skills, and strategic planning - indispensable skills in high school, college and beyond. Other threads of discussion in this session included the notions of:

1. How real is a friend in WoW?
2. Are the relationships that are formed in-game meaningful?
3. Is the social space of the game completely different from real life, or does it simply mimic real life?
4. Can leadership be learned in WoW?
5. Can skills developed within the game world transfer to the real world?

If you are interested in learning more about the potential for learning in games, I recommend you start with Steinkuehler’s work. After all, 10 million people play WoW; and some of them might be your students! -LAURA CHRISTOPHERSON

Spring is conference season. That means getting out of class, baked chicken hotel luncheons, and another free tote bag to stuff into your closet. If it turns out the conference was overbooked and the chicken overdone, take solace that the event won’t be a total wash if you convert your tote into a messenger bag.

Flickr user duganj has created a step-by-step photo tutorial on how to transform those ubiquitous canvas bags from swag into swank. You’ll need a tote bag (you’ve probably got hundreds from various conferences) and sewing skills and supplies, or at least access to the home ec room. It’s a great way to carry around homework or your laptop, and you’ll know you at least got something useful out of your latest conference. -BILL FERRIS

HOW TO - Tote Bag to Messenger bag via Make
Convert a tote to a messenger bag via Lifehacker

As if you don’t already have a tough time getting students to read, schools keep banning the books kids actually like. Young adult literature is a frequently challenged genre, probably due to the fact that the teenaged protagonists often act like, you know, teenagers.

If you’re passionate about kids being able to access books they love, you’ll want to check out BANNED in the Bookhenge on Monday, March 31. In the young adult lit corner will be Frances Bradburn, Chair of the American Library Association’s first Printz Committee. She’ll speak about censorship, intellectual freedom, and how to advocate for banned and challenged young adult books.

BANNED in the Bookhenge is a virtual conference that will take place in NC State University’s Bookhenge in Second Life (if you’re unfamiliar with Second Life, it’s a 3D online virtual world that’s both cool and well beyond the scope of this article). If you’re not ready to jump into Second Life’s virtual playground, you can still listen in via Internet radio.

Getting kids excited about books is part of a teacher’s job. Help make sure they’ll be able to read the books they enjoy. -BILL FERRIS

BANNED in the Bookhenge

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If a hard drive crash scares you more than a house fire, you need to back up your data. Pictures, documents, music, all of it could be history. Fortunately, you can back it up safely and cheaply with Mozy.

Mozy gives you your first 2GB of data free. To salvage more than that, it costs a measly five bucks a month. But you can store a lot with 2GB–that’s a good chunk of photos, a few vital albums, and even your unfinished novel you’ve been kicking around for years. -BILL FERRIS

Mozy

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Note: I heard about Mozy from Leslie Fisher at the NCaect conference. She’s knows about lots of gadgets and do-dads. Check out her site!

Instructify’s own Bill Ferris will be presenting Friday morning at this year’s North Carolina Association for Educational Communications and Technology Conference (NCaect). The presentation is called, “How to Boost Students’ Information Literacy,” and will be pretty much what it sounds like. If you’re at the conference, be sure to stop in and say “hi!”