It Exists! Interactive PowerPoint with Twitter

April 16th, 2012 2 Comments

“Death by PowerPoint” is a common affliction these days. The program was created during the heyday of Web 1.0, or the consumer web (wherein information was provided on the internet simply for the viewers to “consume;” group creation and participation was rare until the slow introduction of forums and discussion boards). PowerPoint is Microsoft multimedia at it’s finest, and suddenly, every organization was conducting presentations and in-service using PowerPoint.

"Death by Presentation"--CC BY-ND by Frits Ahlefeldt via HikingArtist.com

Over time, as most things do that progressively grow in popularity, more and more adopters began over-using the program in very incorrect ways . I have personally encountered 50+ slides in one presentation, tiny words shoved into one slide, presenters reading word for word on each slide, horrible clip art, and even worse, words and images that disappear off the slide due to inappropriate sizing.

Following the advent of Web 2.0 and the collaborative internet, you would have thought that PowerPoint would keep up with the times,  right? Well, sadly, the only major change to our presentation files of old was the extension change from .ppt to .pptx (which, incidentally, was quite the annoying change for us teachers when our students sent projects on the new PowerPoint that we couldn’t open in our old version of PowerPoint).

Well, I’ve encountered information which reveals that you CAN make those PPT files more interactive!

Thanks to this blog post from Timo Elliott, you can download what essentially amounts to PowerPoint extensions (requiring PowerPoint for Windows and Adobe Flash, which does mean that it won’t work for most Apple products) that integrates Twitter tools, as well as some nifty graphic interfaces, into your presentation. Even niftier is the fact that there is nothing to install; the download itself is a PowerPoint file from which you simply need to copy and paste what you want into your own presentation, and BLAMO! — Twitterific interactive presentation at your service.

Twitter Tools for PPT

I’ve tested out each of the nifty features provided by Timo on his blog, and they are great fun, super useful, and fully functional. In fact, I just used the zooming keywords feature today at a presentation I gave for the School of Education at Georgia Gwinnett College.

So, now that we can integrate Twitter into our PowerPoint presentations to make them more collaborative and interactive, perhaps my own colleagues might finally pay attention to both Twitter as a professional development tool as well as the importance of preventing “Death by PowerPoint.”  One can only hope!

You can download the PPT that contains all the Twitter tools here, and you can read the “How To” instruction post here. Happy  PowerPoint-ing!

(P.S. Timo Elliott even has Twitter tools for Prezi! You should give those a try as well. Remember: Interaction means that your audience is engaged!)

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Ctrl+Alt+Teach Nominated!

April 3rd, 2012 No Comments

ISTE SIGVE (Special Interest Group: Virtual Environments) has nominated Ctrl+Alt+Teach for May’s Blog-o’-the-Month!

I am super excited and very honored to be recognized by the amazing leaders, including the current and former Poobahs, of SIGVE. May’s selection of blog nominees came from blogs featured at this year’s Virtual Worlds in Best Practices in Education Conference a few weeks ago (about which I have several posts that I need to publish!).

To vote for Ctrl+Alt+Teach, you need to log onto Second Life and visit the Blogger’s Hut at the new ISTE SIGVE location on Eduisland 9 (which just yesterday put up their official building, so you should visit anyhow). Click on the blue square to vote for Ctrl+Alt+Teach!

I have some amazing fellow nominees, whose blogs I highly recommend:

  • Virtual Outworlding, by Selby Evans, has been on my blogroll for some time. The blog is well establish and thorough about Second Life information and has a wealth of information about previous and current things of interest in Second Life.
  • Alive Learning, by Stylianos Mystakidis, is an extremely informative source of ed tech information. Stylianos is one of the first graduates of the first ever Virtual Worlds Certification program at the University of Washington and now serves the estate manager of Maya Island in Second Life (UWash Project).
  • SolutionaryEDU, by Carl “Solutionary” Icann,  blogs about Humane Education and effective virtual world education. He really takes the time to provide information and links on the concept of Humane Education, something every educator should learn.

Click on the blue square to vote for Ctrl+Alt+Teach!

Also, while you are there, you should check out April’s Blog-o’-the-Month, Flights of Whimsy. Written by Karen, an Australian pre-school teacher, Flights of Whimsy is an amazing read and resource on creativity in the classroom. This blog will be fun to follow by every teacher, even the most jaded high school educator.

Please enjoy exploring the blogs nominated for the month of May, and if you have the moment and the inclination, please go vote!

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The Hunger Games is “Catching Fire” in the Classroom (and with @Educurious)

April 2nd, 2012 No Comments

One of the main tenants of educational technology integration is student relevancy.

We look at what digital era students do and love, and we try to meld those things into education to encourage both knowledge retention and lifelong learning. When something is self-important to a student, they tend to remember it for life rather than just memorize just enough to pass the test and the class.

The Hunger Games (books and movie) is a huge cultural phenomenon with youth all over the world. I knew this series was special when, recently, I overheard two beefy football players in my Music History class extolling the amazingness of the recent Hunger Games movie. But what really caught my attention were the discussions my students had about the themes in The Hunger Games. From poverty issues to Panem’s creation, these teens were thoroughly engrossed and frequently debating more than just the basic story line.

And I’m not the only one who noticed:

Educurious Hunger Games Mini-Unit

Educurious Hunger Games Mini-Unit

Educurious, an organization dedicated to the reduction in high school drop-out rates through project-based learning, has created a one-week Hunger Games Learning Challenge mini-unit, free to download, focusing on how our society might avoid ending up in a civilization like Panem, the dystopian nation in The Hunger Games. The unit ties in student opinion and prior knowledge, current events, and discussion along with alignment to several Common Core Standards (specifically in reading, writing, speaking and listening) and National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S).  On the first page of the unit plan, Educurious describes the unit as the following:

Educurious Units begin with a challenge for students to solve that is relevant to their lives and has a real impact on the world. The Hunger Games book and movie provide many opportunities to raise such questions. These include questions of social class, trust and human connections, and the role that the media plays in forming public opinion and political systems. In this Educurious mini-unit we begin with the challenge: How can we avoid the path to Panem, the post-apocalyptic world of The Hunger Games?

Hunger Games: Fan-made Map of Panem

The unit design is a poster-child for current and effective research-based pedagogies. There are graphic organizers, authentic resources, first-person accounts (namely, a video from the director himself!), the Tuning Protocal, collaboration, Cornell Notes, and exit tickets, and then Educurious even brings in peer review, qualitative and quantitative research aspects, and critical thinking skills. Reading through the unit made me wish I could somehow incorporate this into my totally unrelated classes!

Beyond those aspects, how does this appeal even further to those of us integrated with educational technology? Look at what else the unit incorporates:

  • Learning Management System encouragement (Edmodo, Moodle, ePals, Echo)
  • Google Docs for student discussion and collaboration
  • Learning how to internet search for appropriate sources
  • Possibility of Skyping with experts
  • Final project on Glogster (with which Educurious has partnered for this mini-unit)
  • Learning badges to visually represent progress and assessment

Educators should use this unit as an example of how to incorporate new teaching methodologies along with digitized pedagogy. This is definitely proof that 21st-century education is not just about the educational technology, but the proper integration of the technology along with cutting edge strategies. I will be recommending this mini-unit repetitively to all the language arts and social studies teachers I know, and I will definitely spend some time learning about more about Educurious, it’s mission, and how to bring the curriculum to my school.

As an aside, there is a surge of teachers producing and sharing their Hunger Games lessons online! Check out:

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Blended Learning Infographic

February 2nd, 2012 2 Comments
2673453577_b4afb43b2b

I’ve spent some time reflecting on my experiences with various versions of blended learning (or the combination and incorporation of e-learning /virtual learning with traditional face-to-face learning) following conversations in which I have found myself trying to justify the potential of blended learning in the K-12 setting.

For example, I teach using a form of blended learning. This semester so far, I have been spending on average half of class time conducting instruction as well as practice and production on a computer. While my students needed a few weeks to adjust to the constant switching between computer lab, language/listening lab, and traditional classroom, we have reached a point that when we are in the computer lab, my students walk in and immediately sign into our learning management system (Edmodo this year; I’ve previously used Moodle), and go to various websites I use to teach, reinforce, assess, illustrate critical thinking and encourage collaboration. Meanwhile, I facilitate via online communication both in class and frequently after school. Using this type of blended learning has become a class norm for my students, and, as always, I’m having great success.

Additionally, I’ve experienced blended education with my graduate studies. It was blended learning in a more traditional sense; we participated online during the week and attended a face-to-face class every other weekend with no mixture of the two such as I need to do with my classes. As I recently described to a doctoral committee, I had great personal success in this program. Not only did I find myself learning very well in this type of environment, but also was I able to become sure of myself in an online classroom setting.

Those are just two examples of blended learning, and there are many more. I struggled to describe those different formats to colleagues and other curious educators. However, I recently stumbled upon an amazing infographic by the Knewton company on blended learning that explains it well and provides the missing vocabulary I was trying to find. The facts and figures are fascinating and present an argument as to why more schools aren’t incorporating some form of blended learning. Considering my own experiences, blended learning can be very personalized and student-centric and still have a great deal of success among many types of learners.

Read more and view “Blended Learning: A Disruptive Innovation” infographic:

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The Virtual Pioneers: Traveling the World from Your Desk Chair

January 3rd, 2012 2 Comments

What if every other Sunday evening, you could take travel to historical sites around the world without having to pay a single penny, much less actually move from your couch?

With the Virtual Pioneers, a group of educators interested in historical and educational builds in Second Life, anyone can come along with us on one of our tours.  We meet at our headquarters located on EduIsland 8 (SLurl) at 5pm SLT (8pm EST) on Sunday every two weeks to teleport together to a specific historical location where we meet the sim builder or representative who gives the tour who shares information about what we see.

For example, last month, the VPs visited Versailles in SL where we started a two-part tour of an exact replica of the real chateau circa 1773. Versailles in SL is a role-play sim, which means most avatars present are playing the part of a character in historical France. Reading the information provided at the main landing point (SLurl), we might encounter some French being spoken and written as well.

However, you do not have to role-play when you visit. Versailles in SL is considered a virtual living history museum. OOC (out-of-character) visitors are very welcome. Historically correct clothing is encouraged, which can be easily found for free or cheap on the Second Life Marketplace, at the small market directly in front of the chateau entrance (SLurl) or at the main landing point, where the sim builders have provided a female and a male outfit for avatars to wear. Also, at the main landing point, you can find a Versailles Hud that, when you wear it, will attach a flat map of Versailles on your screen so you know where you are and are able to navigate without getting lost.

Imagine the educational benefit of taking your own students through a tour of some palace or historical location without having to leave their own desks! Many tours are conducted through voice rather than chat, so teachers could work with a tour leader over an LCD projector during actual class time. Talk about cutting down on costs! Also, these locations would also be a great place for administrators and professional development coordinators to take teachers to introduce virtual museums and virtual worlds in education.

Check out some of the amazing photos below of our Versailles trip and on the Virtual Pioneers Flickr page. Visit the VP Website to read more information about previous tours, upcoming events, and the Virtual Pioneer Conference on Friday, January 20th and Saturday, January 21st (I will be blogging about the conference soon).

The Virtual Pioneers is one of the best ways for a New-To-Second-Life educator or administrator to see what virtual worlds can offer themselves as well as for their students. We are very welcoming to newcomers, so feel free to stop by or contact myself or another of the VPers from the webpage to get more information!

Versailles in SL 1

Main Landing Point--CC BY-NC-ND by CatFlippen

Versailles in SL 2

Gathered at the gates--CC BY-NC-ND by CatFlippen

Versailles in SL 5

Accurate details in the Salon de la Guerre--CC BY-NC-ND by CatFlippen

Versailles in SL 6

Galerie de Glaces (Hall of Mirrors)--CC BY-NC-ND by CatFlippen

 

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Friday Defrag: Pedagogical Content Knowledge

December 31st, 2011 No Comments


Pedagogical Content Knowledge = Content Pedagogy + Content Knowledge

Most teachers might not be able to tell the difference between Content Knowledge and Content Pedagogy. I certainly had no idea what either meant nor of their significance in the classroom before I took an amazing class on Curriculum Design at my blended learning Masters program several years ago. I specifically remember finding “pedagogical content knowledge” in the source material we were reading. My memory and sentiments of the passage is so strong that I just took about ten minutes of my time to find the book and quote the passage (which was not an easy feat; moving twice in two years does horrible things to your bookshelf):

“…the key to distinguishing the knowledge base of teaching lies at the intersection of content and pedagogy, in the capacity of a teacher to transform the content knowledge he or she possesses into forms that are pedagogically powerful and yet adaptive to the variations in ability and background presented by the students.”

Shulman, L. (1999b). “Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform.” In Ornstein, Allan C.; Pajak, Edward F. & Ornstein, Stacey B. (Eds.) (2007), Contemporary Issues in Curriculum (4th Edition). Boston: Pearson Education.

The whole article in my text is marked up with blue pen and highlighter everywhere. It was life changing. Not only did Shulman discuss the concept of content knowledge plus content pedagogy, but he also included a detailed listing of research-based methods that all teachers should use to accomplish the combining of knowledge and pedagogy. And this was also the article with the pivotal sentence that morphed my view of the teaching profession as a whole: “A teacher is a member of a scholarly community.”

(Have I mentioned how much my Masters program changed my professional life? I will have to write about it later.)

Teachers who aren’t self-aware of their methodology tend to fall into the category of either content knowledge or content pedagogy, where in the case of the former, they are experts in the field but are not effective teachers or in the case of the latter, they are natural educators but know little of the subject they teach. Unfortunately, most teachers fall into the first category of experts without effective instructional skills.

The combining of the two into pedagogical content knowledge leads to what basically amounts to a magical experience in the classroom. Teachers who both excel in the subject knowledge as well as the subject pedagogy in their teaching field tend to reach students more readily. They know how to take a complex topic and break it down into digestible bits that any young person can consume and learn (not just memorize for a test).

I think that the integration of effective educational technology can be a major game-changer in this conversation. Ed tech is, unto itself, a method of modern pedagogy. If professional development was harnessed correctly within schools and districts and taught appropriate uses of instructional technology in the classroom, then all the teachers with the necessary subject/content knowledge can gain a means of subject/content pedagogy utilizing Web 2.0 application, smart devices, and other internet-based programs. What better way to transform content into powerful and adaptive forms that appeal to today’s digital-oriented student? It would at least be a step in the right direction of reaching the magical “sweet spot” of pedagogical content knowledge that makes certain classrooms so much more effective that most others.

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App Review: “Dimensions” [Augmented Sound Reality]

December 17th, 2011 2 Comments

Last Sunday night, I came across a Wired article about a new iPhone app called Dimensions by RjDj, the developers famous for their Inception app (yes, Inception the movie). Both the Inception app and the new Dimensions app are both referred to as augmented reality games, only Inception is visual while Dimensions is aural (sound).

As a fan of augmented reality and as a music history/technology/theory teacher, I was very intrigued by Dimensions. That night, I downloaded the app before I went to bed with the intention of testing it out for the next couple of days.

First, Dimensions is designed to model several “multiverse” dimensions based on your present experience. For my science-oriented readers, yes, RjDj based their design on the concept of M-Theory, which they detail on their webpage. You are required to have the headphones/mic plugged in for the app to work. If you are quiet and still, then you are in the Tranquil dimension. If you say “lalalalalalaa” loudly for about thirty seconds (as I did), you transfer to the Flux dimensions (designed to play in loud areas). And if you are actively moving enough to make the iPhone move (I just shook my phone rapidly), you go into the Kinetic dimension. Each dimension has specifically composed music that changes depending on the sound your microphone picks up. Your voice is echoed and morphed, your movements are the basis for any drum beat, and the louder the sounds in Flux, the louder the music. The opposite is true for the Tranquil dimension.


I found the changing music depending on your environment VERY nifty and spot on in regards to a musical augmented reality. From a music educator standpoint, you could very well use the app as a classroom activity, especially as  the music is composed by Hans Zimmer (although, in my opinion, everything sounds like it belongs on the “Ghosts I-IV” album by Nine Inch Nails).  I loved the musical experience.

But the enjoyment really ended there for me. The app is also considered an augmented reality GAME. While I find innovative games entertaining, especially within educational contexts, I think Dimensions has one or two aspects that ruin the listening experience and make the game too pervasive to the point where, if you are listening and walking, you actually have to stop everything you are doing in order to accomplish something immediately, even though the website basically says that the game, unlike others, does not require your full attention.

 On this picture to the left, I have placed my thumb on the circle which “activates” the dimensional map which is, in reality, based on the real map where I live. Every few minutes, there are pieces of Quantum Cells that I collect to charge up my special “beam.”

Yes, you are reading everything correctly.

When you move your thumb left or right, you circle around your position and the lighter area acts as your beam and picks up objects.

So, imagine you are listening to amazing ambient music. Suddenly, your life is interrupted by a woman’s voice saying something like, “I’m not sure, but our radar is picking up an object in your area to your right.” You activate your map and find an artifact, or an object that resembles a gem. In order to obtain the artifact, you have to move your thumb down to engage your tracker beam and move the object into your circle.

Alternately, once you start to obtain more artifacts, you attract something called Nephilim, which want to steal your artifacts. The woman’s voice will make you jump out of your skin when she randomly says something along the lines of “Quick! A Nephilim is attacting! Defend yourself!” You engage your map, target the shadowy skull figure approaching and then move your thumb up and away from your circle to repel the Nephilim. And if you ignore the Nephilim, well, you lose an artifact. So even if your hands are full (as mine were at one point with a crying baby), you have to fish your phone from your pocket and repel the Nephilim in time.

At this  point, I’m feeling so-so about the app. The music is great, the game could be interesting, but the music is interrupted way too frequently for my liking. Dimensions should probably have an option of more music or more game play.

However, there is one more feature that disillusioned the experience for me. When you use your beam, you spend the Quantum Cells that you occasionally  collect (the gold objects at the bottom of the screen). After attracting two artifacts and then repelling one Nephilim, I ran out of Quantum Cells.

Get more Quantum Cells? Sure! That would be great!

Oh. (It goes up to $30.00 USD.)

Final Thoughts:  Ah, what could have been! The app had great potential as a fun teaching tool and a perfect example of the educational use of augmented reality with the original music, the adapting and morphing of sound depending on your own local sound and activity, and the occasional use of great vocabulary. I could just imagine the great reflection blogging after students walk around the school listening to the app. However, the game goes overboard and might even require players to pay more in order to keep their artifacts if they want to level up and discover other dimensions. Take away the unnecessary need to pay more for the app (I paid $2.99 in the App Store) and the frequency of musical interruptions, and I would recommend this app for teachers and students.

Rating: 3/5 [I have to give credit to the musical experience; it really is amazing! Also, the game play has great potential.]

 

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Introducing “Friday Defrag”

November 25th, 2011 No Comments

I remember that day way back in the mid 1990s when my giant desktop computer became painfully slow and working on my high school Literature paper became arduous. That’s when I  discovered the beauty of the disk defragmentation.

Granted, the process took half a day at the very least. I’d be watching the old convex screen for hours as those little colored lines changed to signify… something. At the time, I wasn’t sure what defragmentation did exactly, but I knew that once it was complete, my computer ran a little faster. I still think that it’s funny I grew up in an age where we learned to hate lag, spyware, and the Blue Screen of Death.

Defrag

Remember this window?--CC BY-SA 2.0 by lancefisher via flickr

It was years later, around the time when I stopped worrying if I needed to continually defrag my hard drive, I learned that defragmenting is nothing more than organizing files into smaller and correctly placed segments. It’s essentially taking parts of the whole that are misplaced (hence “fragmented) and putting them into a clearer order.

I found some of my blog post ideas to be following the them of “defragging” particular topics in education and educational technology. So, I am introducing Friday Defrag to the blog. On occasional Fridays, I will tackle an issue or topic that isn’t well-known or is frequently misunderstood by most educators and think through the details to make it a little more comprehensible or to argue my point of view in the matter.

As for the Friday Defrag post banner, part of it comes from a conference logo by Stowe Boyd (License CC BY-NC 2.0) via Flickr. I used will be linking each banner to this post to assure attribution. Which reminds me that I should probably write a Friday Defrag for Creative Commons and image copyright, considering how so many educators still struggle with the issue!

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Where You Should Be (Virtually) Today & Tomorrow: Global Education Conference

November 17th, 2011 1 Comment
GECbadgeattending

What have you been doing this week to enrich yourself as part of the education profession (whether K-12 or Higher Ed, teacher, tech coordinator or administrator, or even a student)?

Since Monday morning the 14th of November, the Global Education Conference 2011 has been continually ongoing almost every hour of every day. Organized by Lucy Gray (@elemenous) and Steve Hargadon (@stevehargadon), the Global Education Conference is a yearly event inviting an amazing amount of presenters to share their work and ideas. The entire event is FREE and ONLINE and features several differing keynotes (including the amazing Alan November of November Learning) and many presentations in foreign languages.

The website has a wealth of guides and information to cure any nervousness or shyness in participating. For those of you unsure of attending, there is not set guideline for watching a presentation. You can lurk and be completely passive or you can contribute as much as you want in the chat room or even audibly.  Don’t be afraid to ask questions! Each session is hosted as a webinar on Blackboard Collaborate (formerly better known as Elluminate), which is very user-friendly for the attendee.  To make sure your computer is ready to run a Blackboard Collaborate room, click here.

Although you may have missed the opportunity to attend some sessions live, you still have Thursday and Friday to attend some presentations! I will be posting my favorite presentations from Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in a later post, but I would like to recommend a few presentations for the remaining 24 hours left in the conference. So, even if you haven’t attended the conference yet, or even if you’ve never heard of the Global Education Conference, take the opportunity to expand your professional SELF-development and expand your PLN by viewing at least one of the following presentations.

[All times are posted as Eastern Standard -5 GMT. You can click here to find these sessions in other time zones. I am also including the direct link to Google Calendar for the event, which will automatically adjust to your time zone if you add the event to your calendar.]

These sessions are only my personal picks for the next day of presentations, and there are so many more that you can attend at multiple times. I encourage you to attend at least one session to experience what you may be missing! See you there!

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Hello There, Australians! (Accidental Networking in Virtual Worlds)

November 8th, 2011 No Comments

I will eventually post about all my adventures in virtual worlds, but I had quite the virtual experience the other night/early morning. It reminded me how education-centered experiences in virtual environments like Second Life lend themselves to “accidental networking,”or when you follow a random announcement or link to some event and end up finding amazing people and learning amazing things. I was browsing through my Twitter feed later than usual one night (hazard of having a newborn), when I encountered the following tweet:

I respect @PeggySheehy very much. She is one of the original pioneers of using Second Life in K-12 education (read about Ramapo Island here) as well as currently establishing World of Warcraft in education along with Lucas Gillespie (@PCSTech). In fact, one of my very first educator events in Second Life was a WoW in schools presentation at an ISTE SIGVE Speaker Series presentation in 2010.

I logged in and followed the SLurl (Second Life URL) to the Second Life presence of Macquarie University, of which I had never heard before:

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