YouTube in a PowerPoint show!

Ok, All revved up to start posting regularly and my wheels are spinning off.  Great start to the school year but have jumped in full speed ahead.  Focus is on planning for the year and trying to get teacher's attention.  Lucky for me I have a few who are keeping me busy!

Have spent today trying to get ahead of the curve and figure out the best way to teach MLA formatting with newly installed Word 2007.  (What the heck is up with Google and the Calibri font?)  I will post on this topic very soon.  I've come up with some great questions regarding the level of teaching to do on this topic and some great solutions with various levels of student input.

Serendipitously, today I came across the answer to a question that I have been asked a bizzilion times (almost).  Can I put a YouTube video on my PowerPoint?  Well, yes Virginia, as of MS 2007 you can do exactly that!  And it is easy and fun!  Check out the video below for step by step details of what to do and how to do it.  (Might look a little scary for non-techies but very simple when following this recipe.)



This video assumes an active and unfiltered access to the Internet.  For districts that still block YouTube and other video sites other options do exist.  The same author who produced this video offers a second video describing a rather complicated method.  I prefer the much easier method of using Zamzar.com or other similar file conversion site to rip the video into a format that can be saved on the hard drive and played locally. 

When streaming video directly from YouTube, there are no copyright implications (see previous posts in this blog).  In any case where the video is removed from its source (converted and saved on your computer) it is important to remember to give credit to creators! 

Have a great day!

Better powerpoints = Better presentations

Juggling many classes and assignments, I have been bouncing between the K12 Online Conference 2008, with presentations on the uses of and thoughts about media in the classroom, and my own need to create a professional development piece for teachers using a "high quality" Powerpoint presentation. All this plus two other classes, a sick family, and a job that occasionally requires my attention . . .

The K12 Conference is fantastic, blending the thoughts and experiences of librarians and educators around the world through the use of many different media tools. It has been amazing to me to see all the different ways that librarians and other presenters have packaged their information. Presentations typically only last 20 minutes so it is not too large a commitment at one time. The sessions are all independent of each other and will be available online "forever".

Beginning with these k12 presentations, though, which I will not link to individually here, I serendipitously found myself on Slideshare and TeacherTube -- two more great resources. I discovered several insightful presentations discussing .ppt techniques that I found helpful in developing my own presentation.

This self-directed slide show discusses the failure of traditional "template design" .ppt presentations and offers simple creative suggestions for improvement.

Dodging Bullets in Presentations

Rowan Manahan from Dublin, Ireland is a talented speaker, consultant, and trainer. He offers more info and suggestions in other slideshare presentations he has developed and on his blog.

After too long, trying to re-create my search, I am posting only one .ppt hints presentation here because I seem to be unable to locate others that I used. I did just discover a presentation that I have not viewed yet (45 minutes) on How to create a great PowerPoint without breaking the law. Ok, as a new blogger this brings up a great question. What can I post to this site?

For my presentation, I found a great photo of an iceberg all over the internet, including on a number of different blogs. It even popped up a couple times in a creative commons search but something didn't feel right. I finally traced it back to a photographer named Ralph Clevenger who had his site locked to cut & paste and displayed a very clear copyright warning. The many reproductions I saw on blogs and websites were all copyright violations. Is it a violation to post someone elses video on my blog? I should probably already know this but alas, I'll have to get back to you on that . . .