Here is my first attempt at a public Voice Thread, using pictures from a literacy camp in Minnesota. Here's the VoiceThread:
You can link to an easier to see and use version here: http://voicethread.com/view.php?b=7331.
You should be able to add your own comments, either typed or verbal. Give it a try.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Making PowerPoint Books
Here's a relatively easy way to make books in PowerPoint. You might want to make books because one or more of your students has a specific interest not met by your classroom or school library, has a disability and paper copies are inaccessible, you enjoy making books. You might want to teach your kids how to make them for each other. I've tried to lay out steps below. This is how I do it on a Mac. Some things will look slightly different on a PC but the process is the same.
1. Open PowerPoint. Go to Format > Slide Layout and Choose Title.
2. Move the Title box to the bottom of the slide (unless you like your text at the top). Copy and paste this slide repeatedly so that you have more slides than you think you'll use. It's faster and easier to delete unwanted slides when you're done than to create additional.
3. Gather your images for the pages from Flickr's creative common area. These are public domain photos that are searchable. You can write your text first and then search for images second, but it is faster to get your pictures and then write text to fit.
4. Click on the All Sizes button above the picture, choose the small or medium size for digital books. Small usually looks fine--you can view in PowerPoint and decide for yourself.
5. On a Mac you can click and drag the picture directly onto a PowerPoint slide, move it where you want, and resize. Then your can drag the URL to the notes window below the slide. On a PC, download the image (use the Insert Picture > From File to put on slide), and copy and paste the URL.
6. Save regularly. Computers, especially lab computers, are fickle. You don't want to have to repeat your work.
7. In slide sorter view, you can rearrange your images/slides to suit your needs.
8. When you are done, you can transfer the URL's from the notes under each slide to a final "credits" page.
If you have additional questions, let me know, and I'll do my best to clarify these instructions further.
1. Open PowerPoint. Go to Format > Slide Layout and Choose Title.
2. Move the Title box to the bottom of the slide (unless you like your text at the top). Copy and paste this slide repeatedly so that you have more slides than you think you'll use. It's faster and easier to delete unwanted slides when you're done than to create additional.
3. Gather your images for the pages from Flickr's creative common area. These are public domain photos that are searchable. You can write your text first and then search for images second, but it is faster to get your pictures and then write text to fit.
4. Click on the All Sizes button above the picture, choose the small or medium size for digital books. Small usually looks fine--you can view in PowerPoint and decide for yourself.
5. On a Mac you can click and drag the picture directly onto a PowerPoint slide, move it where you want, and resize. Then your can drag the URL to the notes window below the slide. On a PC, download the image (use the Insert Picture > From File to put on slide), and copy and paste the URL.
6. Save regularly. Computers, especially lab computers, are fickle. You don't want to have to repeat your work.
7. In slide sorter view, you can rearrange your images/slides to suit your needs.
8. When you are done, you can transfer the URL's from the notes under each slide to a final "credits" page.
If you have additional questions, let me know, and I'll do my best to clarify these instructions further.
Accessible Video Game -- Snood
If you haven't caught the Snood wave, you will soon. Originally designed as shareware by a college geology professor, David Dobson, it is now distributed by Word of Mouse Games. There are multiple PC and Mac versions, a version for GameBoy, Palm... Seriously addictive.
Heard a radio interview with the inventor, who mentioned the game was played on one of the Sopranos episodes, that Michael Crichton claimed it was cutting into his writing time... Brandeis University has a Snood club listed in its student organizations.
Simple concept--shoot Snoods--funny looking critters. Since it requires only mouse access, and there are gazillions of mouse adaptations, and there is no time element (you can take as long as you want between shots at Snoods) and multiple levels, the game is perfect for folks with significant physical disabilities.
Heard a radio interview with the inventor, who mentioned the game was played on one of the Sopranos episodes, that Michael Crichton claimed it was cutting into his writing time... Brandeis University has a Snood club listed in its student organizations.
Simple concept--shoot Snoods--funny looking critters. Since it requires only mouse access, and there are gazillions of mouse adaptations, and there is no time element (you can take as long as you want between shots at Snoods) and multiple levels, the game is perfect for folks with significant physical disabilities.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Wireless Communication and Public School Disconnects
I was listening to National Public Radio talking this morning about how increasingly employees are working from home with advances in the internet, but that in the process they are becoming lonely. Rather than go into work, they host other stay-home internet-using workers in their apartments to work for a day called Jelly. Apparently this is a growing phenomenon in New York, Washington, Chicago, and other big cities.
Meanwhile, two different students from a recent master's class on tech-supported literacy report that their principals will not allow any students to have email accounts. Who knows what havoc they might wreak or what horrors might befall them if they had access to a technology that billions of people across the world have been using for much more than a decade. I think there has always been a disconnect between school and real life learning (remember Mark Twain, "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."), but I think it's a chasm at present heading toward a cataclysm. While NCLB pushes schools, teachers, and children toward more and more multiple-choice expertise in minutiae and spends billions for testing, most schools I've visited cannot figure out how to budget for more than a single computer in most classrooms.
In the real world, however, choices seems much more complex than multiple choice and we are more and more virtually connected. Yesterday morning, e.g., a doc student and I sat in a coffee shop, sipping a latte and a macchiato. With wireless internet and our two laptops, we held an instant messaging planning session with a colleague in Germany. We designed a research project, explored some free internet resources to support it, set some deadlines, and did it all in greater comfort and without the interruptions of the workplace.
Meanwhile, two different students from a recent master's class on tech-supported literacy report that their principals will not allow any students to have email accounts. Who knows what havoc they might wreak or what horrors might befall them if they had access to a technology that billions of people across the world have been using for much more than a decade. I think there has always been a disconnect between school and real life learning (remember Mark Twain, "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."), but I think it's a chasm at present heading toward a cataclysm. While NCLB pushes schools, teachers, and children toward more and more multiple-choice expertise in minutiae and spends billions for testing, most schools I've visited cannot figure out how to budget for more than a single computer in most classrooms.
In the real world, however, choices seems much more complex than multiple choice and we are more and more virtually connected. Yesterday morning, e.g., a doc student and I sat in a coffee shop, sipping a latte and a macchiato. With wireless internet and our two laptops, we held an instant messaging planning session with a colleague in Germany. We designed a research project, explored some free internet resources to support it, set some deadlines, and did it all in greater comfort and without the interruptions of the workplace.
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