Powerpoint, Prezzi and Patience, Oh My!

Having practiced law for 17 years, let me give you my honest opinion about Powerpoint/Prezi presentations.  Don't use them as a crutch.  Don't stand there and read from them verbatim.  Use them because you acutally have a NEED to use them, not just for entertainment purposes.  And, for God's sake, be prepared to go on with your presentation should your Powerpoint/Prezi fail. I saw opposing counsel completely lose a jury in a six-figure liability case because his opening Powerpoint wouldn't run and he couldn't do an adequate opening statement without it.  Because of these factors,  I rarely used Powerpoint and on the few occasions that I did, I paid my daughter, who was in elementary school at the time, to do them for me.  Win-win situation.

So imaging my surprise last year when we had to do a Powerpoint presentation for class.  I made what I was sure was a terrible mistake waiting until midnight to teach myself Powerpoint, but to my surprise, it was a snap of the fingers.  Everything was intuitive and flowed in a linear fashion - A to B to C and so forth until you got to the end.  And it was easy to add things to your slides to make your presentation more interesting.  By one a.m., I was Powerpointing like a BOSS.

So for this class, we had to prepare a presentation using a program called Prezi.  I will admit that I liked what I saw from the examples our instructor showed us and figured that this would be just as easy as Powerpoint to learn.  I quickly learned otherwise.

From the start, it should have been obvious to me that Prezi is not linear.  In reality, following a Prezi presentation can be a bit like following a drunken room of toddlers.  Instead of going from point to point in a straight line, with Prezi you go here then there then back to here and then way over there and then further over that way and on and on.  And intuitive?  Well, maybe, but in a frustrating way because there are very few tutorials to help you figure out what to do.  Heather and I were able to complete our assignment, and I will admit that I liked the ability to share the presentation on line with her and we could chat and edit on line together.  But I never got past the feeling that Prezi requires almost a hive brain while Powerpoint calls for an ant brain.

But that being said, I am glad that we got the chance to work for it because our students think differently one from another.  While one student may be a linear,straight line thinker who learns better from linear methods, the person next to him or her could very well be a hive brain that needs the constant stimulation and movement with a Prezi to stay focused and on-task.  Thus, knowing how to use both presentation packages gives my students the opportunity to work with the one that best fits their learning skills.  Sometimes it's going to be necessary to put my own preferences aside in order to allow my students to utilize tools that will help them learn.  If that takes a hive-brain mentality, so be it.  Students first.

Google Search and Scream-Cast-O-Matic

What should have been an easy assignment this week involving screen-capturing the process of an advanced google search turned out to be a hard one and major lesson learned about technology.

I went out of town over the weekend and knew I would have some downtime while there, so I planned on doing the advanced Google search assignment while there. My Googling skiils are the envy of a lot of my friends, but I will admit that I learned some new tricks from watching the Google tutorial videos.  

Because I was flying, I didn't want to lug my laptop through the airport, so I thought, given my desire to find new ways to utilize my ipad, that I would take it instead and do my assignment on it.  I'd practiced the search that I wanted to do on my laptop and the Screen-Cast-O-Matic program was a piece of cake.  I figured the actual capturing of the search would take 30 minutes tops and then I could enjoy my weekend.  Boy, was I wrong. The trouble started when I went to the screencast program using safari on my ipad.  I could access the program, but the actual screencast wouldn't work because ipads aren't Java-enabled.  After spending about an hour trying to get things to work, I researched the issue and found that I could use a Firefox app for the ipad that should allow me to screen capture the search.  So I spent the $20 dollars for the app and, surprise, surprise, surprise, it STILL didn't work.  I tinkered with it for about another hour before ultimately giving up and borrowing someone else's laptop to do the assignment.  Guess what?  It took about a half hour to do the screen capture.

So what is the lesson here?  Just because a piece of technology works on one device isn't a guarantee that it's going to work on all devices.  Had I tried to do this at home, I would have given up after fifteen minutes and opted to take the laptop with me.  Always know what your device's capabilities are, especially when you are working back and forth between a windows-based laptop and an Apple product or vice-versa.  Failure to figure these issues out in advance may result in a scream that can be heard all the way in Philadelphia.

So When You Said Workflow, I Heard.....

So this was a bit of a confusing week for me due to terminology.  And I guess the takeaway for me is that when it comes to technology, as in all other areas, words can mean everything to different people.

Last week in class, we watched two videos about how future technology will make our lives easier and more manageable.  The videos dealt with Corning's efforts to develop what I will call "smart glass." which is just glass combined with touchscreen techonology that offers all sorts of applications for home, education and business.  While I admit that some of what was shown was interesting, a lot of it reminded me of new developments in quilting - you have to consider whether the "NEW" way of doing things is actually more complicated or time-consuming than the "OLD" way and then just go from there. I am at an age where I am a bit set in my ways and hesitant to change to a fully automated me.  But.....go with the flow and pick what works and  move forward.

So we had to do a workflow that incorporated technology.  What I heard was use techonology to make a flow chart of a process - so I did a chart of the decision making process of a theatrical production from start to finish.  I wanted to use my ipad because I''ve scarcely touched the surface of what I can do with that device other than play Candy Crush.  I found a very easy app to make my flow chart and was happy with my finished product.

But when we got to class, I found out that my interpretation was incorrect.  Instead, we were supposed to look at our daily routines as teachers and plan an organized workflow of daily activities that incorporated technology to help make our tasks easier to manage and complete.  Boy, did I miss the mark on that one.  But it turned out that pretty much everyone in the class construed the assignment a little differently, so it turned out ok.  

The takeaway from this is the need for specificity when discussing technology because what you hear may be completely different than what is desired.  And also, it's ok to play with and investigate different things for your ipad.  Chances are, you're not going to break it.  :)