Don't Let The Experts Tell You Powerpoint Sucks!

I was really excited to listen to this Webinar, so much so that I forgot to do my blog while listening (which I usually do). Since Dorothy sent us the link to Tom Kuhlman's blog I've spent a lot of time perusing it as well as other people's sites (Garr Reynolds - Presentation Zen, TED Presentations) and borrowing design books. I think the ideas are great and I'm getting inspired but I have to self-edit before I drive myself crazy with too many ideas :). So this morning's Webinar complimented his blog. The main takeaways for me:

Think blank canvas - move away from thinking of PowerPoint in terms of bullets and images, you can be totally creative with a blank canvas
Create your own images - breakdown images into simple shapes that can be reconstructed in PowerPoint
Seek out inspiration - from other people, blogs, gurus. Tom pulls down the TED presentations and watches one every now and then to see what ideas he can pull
There are a lot of communities that discuss these topics. I was amazed by the 500+ people who attended this session, most of whom were IDs. There are so many people designing training and PowerPoint is a useful tool to do that.
White space, white space, white space - don't be afraid of it, use it liberally
Slide count does not matter - it's better to have more slides with the information broken down then to jam it all onto one slide
New resources - we'll be purchasing some books to stock our library (Presentation Zen, Non-Designer's Presentation book

Session Information (you need to sign-in to view archive): Ellumniate Event
Tom's resource page: Rapid e-Learning Blog Post

Dorothy's add-on to Christy's blog post.

Comments

Scratch - OWAU discussion 10/28

Aloha kākou, I while back, I learned about this product from a presentation at the eSchool conference. The speaker was so excited about Scratch and was having so much fun demonstrating it that my mind began racing immediately. "I could use it in `Ike Hawai`i courses and I bet I could use it to develop tons of activities for the A`o Makua `ōlelo Hawai`i courses". Then, reality set in as I returned to work intending to try it out after I finished my "next" task. Well, you know how that goes. 7 months later, I finally took a stab at it out of necessity of course. I really wanted some type of activity to teach my students about different Kapu in old Hawai`i without having them just read a list of them. So, what it Sratch? Simply put, it's a developer's tool (a very inexpereinced developer like myself). It allows you to create activities and games using "coding" that is in a drag and drop format. The codes are pre-written & range from phrases like ...

E pule kakou . . .

Aloha all, I was trying to think so hard of a "techie" tip and finally gave up. I even googled "tips and tricks" for various programs and then thought "I can't blog about something I don't actually use!" Then, as I was sitting in my Papa Makua class, doing all kinds of protocal and thought about how we keep looking for a short pule to do to open our meetings. I had `A`ali`i write a pule in Hawaiian. He was worried about the grammar and structure of it so I asked Kelly C. to kökua by editing and doing an audio recording so you can hear the pronunciation. Hope it's helpful :) E ho`omalu käkou E kö mäkou makua i loko o ka lani Mahalo no nä pömaika`i a pau. Mahalo no ke ali`i lokomaika`i o Pauahi a me këia kula nei. E `olu`olu, e kia`i iä mäkou i ke alahele küpono me ka lökahi. Ke nonoi ha`aha`a nei mäkou i ka inoa o Iesu Cristo `Ämene `Unuhi (translation): Let us pray Our Father in heaven Thank you for all the many blessings. Thank you for the gen...

3/19 Owau: FaceBook CourseFeed & Blackboard

Initially when I first joined FaceBook, it was because I wanted to see what the hype was all about since many of our learners seem to be hooked onto this social networking site. After I set up an account, I didn't do much until my friends from high school, college and even my own family (including my dad) started inviting me to be their "friend" to network together. It was only until recently that I realized why our students would probably prefer logging into Facebook first before even thinking about opening up Blackboard to begin their online course. Once your network of friends is set up, it's definitly an easy way to keep updated on what's going on at a distance. I really haven't done much in Facebook besides the basics, but I thought it would be interesting for us to look at the CourseFeed interface ( http://apps.facebook.com/coursefeed ) that was developed. CourseFeed is a free Blackboard Building Block and Facebook app that alerts students in Faceboook w...

Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

Search This Blog