Week 4

Another interesting week in the land of digital storytelling. Our new technology this week was the presentation tool called a "Prezi." I have been viewing all the samples on the website and watching the "how-to's" on Prezis. It definitely makes presentations more interesting for the viewer to watch. I like the whole concept of main ideas and more specific points being organized like a web instead of the standard outline format. It's basically a presentation using a graphic organizer (more specifically a word web). Graphic organizers have been the all the buzz for a few years now on how students should organize their thoughts, ideas, and information. It makes total sense for it to be available in a presentation form. In terms of using the prezis for our six best pictures, I'm not sure how exactly we're supposed to use them. Do we just post the pictures within the prezi and then write a few thoughts about each picture? Is there something specific we need to write about? Do we need to write anything at all? It doesn't really specify on the rubric.

I also enjoyed seeing all the presentation slide examples in chapter 7 of Presentation Zen this week. It was nice to see some final products of what Garr has been preaching about rather than just a slide or two at a time. I was also amazed at how much I understood about the presentations even though there was nobody speaking and there were very few words on the slides. It goes to show how important simplicity is in slide preparation.

I also am moving forward with my pecha kucha. I am going to do it on my trip to Washington D.C. I took with my girlfriend this past summer. I have a variety of pictures that I took of both historical sites and of the two Brewer games I went to. It was difficult limiting myself to the 20 pictures I needed to choose for the presentation. It is proving just as difficult to select my 6 pictures for the prezi presentation.

Week 3

I first want to discuss some of the best presentations. I don't know if the one on water (the presentation that is embedded on the Ning) has won any awards yet, but I thought that one was very good, and that's without the benefit of the presenter talking. It had fantastic visuals and great statistics. It also made me thirsty as I was going through it. I also viewed the one on health care reform and insurance reform. It won the best presentation for 2009. I thought it was very good also, but it did seem to get a bit cluttered at time with words and there was a lot of reading to go with it. I'm sure it would have helped to hear what the presenter was saying along with it. I did like the whole "napkin" concept and how it kept all the diagrams fairly simple. Also each category (person, insurance company, medical provider, and government) was kept the same color throughout. I also kept waiting for the presenter to take a side, but it seemed to just provide facts and not necessarily try to sway the viewer one way or the other. I'm trying to use some of these examples to help me improve on my previous presentation. I think simplicity is the way to think about it. I'll see what I can come up with.

I also listened to some of the This I Believe stories. I was impressed that they still had a lot of the original essays from back in the 1950s. A lot of the topics seemed to focus on the goodness of people and somehow tied into the Cold War. I have a strong familiarity to T.I.B. because a teacher in the school I work promoted this program and had students and staff members writing and then reading their essays to the school over the P.A. system. It makes me think about what I believe in strongly. If I were to write an essay I still don't know what it would be about. I also think it is a great exercise in helping develop and write thesis statements. What a person believes is the thesis and then all the reasons why help support the thesis.

Animoto was fun to work with this week. I didn't realize that the website actually produces the video. All we have to do is upload the pictures and pick the music. They decide how to display the images. It makes it very simple and user friendly. The Pecha Kucha will be an interesting assignment. I like the idea of having restraints, as was mentioned in Presentation Zen. It helps weed out all the unnecessary information and makes it more succinct. I'm curious as to how broad of topics our P.K.'s will be able to use. Our group also had a successful meeting on tokbox this afternoon, although one group member's microphone was not working. We were able to remedy the situation by having her call another group member and communicate through speaker phone. We could see her and she could hear us, but we couldn't hear her, (before the speaker phone idea). That is a great resource to have available on the Ning.

I can't believe we're already halfway through this class!

Class Session 2

I think that session two provided some very valuable information and I once again learned an incredible amount of new ideas. I looked at a few of the stories on the Center for Digital Storytelling website. The one I found the most intriguing and well done was titled, Minutiae and is about a man's daily morning routine. He is married with two young children and he details his morning ranging from making coffee, to getting the kids ready, to getting himself to work. I thought it was very well done and I was amazed at all he does in just an hour or two.

I also watched Ken Robinson's talk on creativity and was blown away at some of the things he talked about. He brought up some wonderful points about today's education system. He questioned how we can educate people when we have no idea what the future holds, even five years from now. He described how creativity is squandered in schools and how everyone is born creative but are eventually educated out of it. He even went as far to say that creativity is as important as literacy in schools today. He pointed out that kids will take a chance if they are not frightened of being wrong, however education systems are teaching that mistakes are the worst things you can make. He also states that if we're not prepared to be wrong, we'll never come up with anything original. He also discussed the hierarchy of education systems and how the arts are usually at the bottom. He also believes that with the way the current education system is set up that their goal is to produce university professors. Finally he discussed academic inflation and how degrees are meaning less and less and also his three types of intelligence; diverse, dynamic, distinct. Sir Ken is an excellent speaker and really threw some new ideas out there to get me thinking about education in a whole new light.

I also spent some time on voice thread this weekend. Through my initial browsing, I was impressed with one fifth grader's story about Washington D.C. I traveled there this past summer plus I figured if a fifth grader can make voice threads I'm sure I can. He did a great job, and also saw a lot of the same stuff I saw last summer. I ended up doing a story on violence during the civil rights and found some great photographs. I then uploaded a power point I did for the 571 class about copyright. It has a lot of information in it, but I already know there will be a lot of changes to it.

I believe that I can use digital stories in a lot of things I do, both personally and professionally. Voicethread is a fantastic tool and could be used for any sort of presentation of material. It would be a great way for students to present information to other classmates, and the comments section allows other classmates to share their input. I'm looking forward to use the site more and become more familiar with it and all of its abilities.

First Lesson

I have been very impressed so far with the class as a whole. I have learned so much already just from one class meeting and the work to go along with it. I have already shared much of my newly acquired knowledge with family, friends, and co-workers. The ning is an incredible tool to have available and it seems fairly simple to use. I am enjoying taking pictures everyday and use it almost like a digital diary. I wonder what our ultimate goal with the photos will be. I'm guessing we'll use the photos on animoto to create a slide presentation, but I think I also read something in the syllabus about using our top six photos for something. Even something as simple as the "Readability" site has already enhanced my desire to read more online. I still enjoy reading hard copy books, magazines, and newspapers, but having readability get rid of all the junk on websites and enlarge the text makes reading online more appealing.

Our readings for the class have been very informative and it really makes me look at power point and presentations in a new light. I am very impressed with the creativity that our class has shown so far with the future stories and to see both how far into the future people go, and to see what sort of goals and aspirations people have. The "tech head" stories were interesting, however I ran into quite a few links that were not there anymore and some of the sites just contained large amounts of text. I eventually found two good sites, but you'll have to go to my Example of stories post to find out more.

I am curious to see how the next "class" is going to go online. I have never done a class where all the people meet online with microphones and speakers. I took one class as an undergrad where all the content was online but we never actually met while we were all online. I hope to learn more about the animoto site and about our future assignments. I looked over the syllabus and the rubrics but I'd like to be able to discuss the future assignments and know when the assignments are due.

Off to go relax before the big Packer game. GO PACK!!!

First post for 531

We are setting up all our accounts for the websites we will be using.