Week 5 Story

This week I really enjoyed making the Petcha Kutcha. I have learned that 20 seconds is actually a reasonable amount of time to explain a slide. I found that it was actually more time that I initially needed. I found myself going back so that I could fill in the slides with more of my voice. I believe that Petcha Kutcha was an excellent way to create my presentation: an autobiography. However, I teach science and I feel that 4 minutes is just not enough time to explain some things. I believe that it is effective only of used at the right time. 

As far as the rubric is concerned, I decided to use Rubistar. I use this site a lot because it is free and I can customize the rubrics as needed. Although, generally I find that I do not need to make many changes. 

Week 4 Story

I can go on and on forever about how great Prezi is. The concept is great! It is not like PowerPoint where we would have 58 slides. Everything is located on one page! It is interactive for both the teacher and the students. It was very simple to create and the navigation is easy. The one downfall that I can see is that there is not much offered to make the presentation more aesthetically engaging. What I mean by that is there is a lack of background designs and the text feature is seriously bland. Why are there only three fonts available for this feature? Other than these two quirks, I think the program is great. I can't wait to use it in my classroom.

Week 3 Story

This week I learned about a lot of new programs. My personal favorite was animoto. This is a great way to make quick presentations that can easily be personalized. Too bad the site is not free!

I also leaned about presentation principles that make the presentations more aesthetically pleasing and more importantly more manageable to teach and learn. While reviewing these principles I learned a lot about myself. All along I though that my presentations were done well when in actuality they could use some work. My slides need to be slimmed down a bit and I could include handouts for my students. My issue is that my students will not utilize the handouts nor will they pay attention to me if they are not required to follow along. Any ideas, please share. ..