EVO-PPT 2008 Syllabus Screenshot

Some troubles, but all's well

ran a powerpoint today. of course there were some problems with the cables, but everything worked out alright.

PPT in the Classroom

What kind of course will this be?

• project oriented? the participants learn skills in the context of how to put them together to create a final peice
  
• skills? kinda like a cook book or how-to-improve-your...(golf swing)
  

What exact skills will folks be learning? Perhaps we could design a chart of sorts that would more clearly describe exactly which skills we're going to cover.

EV Online 2007

I was recently honored with an invitation to join the Electronic Village Online six week session on using PowerPoint in the Classroom.

At this point there are a few things I need to do to prepare for the October 8th Moderators' Training Session.

1. read through a heap of emails to catch up on the chatter
2. post a bio on the wiki
3. join the YahooGroup for moderators
   

and there was more... but I can't remember unfortunately. I tried to save the YM conversation I had with Christine a little while ago, but they don't have that feature!

The EVO Training Wiki

Looking back

Wow, it's been almost a year since I've contributed to this blog. It get's hard to juggle all of my blogs around. They are useful though.

I'm just about to begin working on the music video PowerPoint projects with my fourth year computer class. I'm looking forward to seeing what this year's group will do.

I've begun a new class with the Computers and English fourth year class. A challenging, but fun class to say the least. We're working on remixing audio loops right now to learn about expression through sound. It's expectedly taken longer than I initially had planned for.

The fifth year computer guys are working on Flash projects using the new Pro version 8. We're only just scratching the surface in this class.

JALT Presentation materials - arrrgg!

Doreen and I have been cranking on pulling materials together for our JALT presentation this weekend in Shizuoka. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll all go through well enough. There's a sizable list of things that can potentially go wrong.

• The song doesn't play back in the presentation
  
• Presentation CD's come out as coasters
• My projector dies
• Computer problems, etc.

I'm staying positive though. We still have time to get things together. I'm quite happy with my automated Flash-based Captivate Walk-through of all the later steps for putting together a Karaoke Project using PowerPoint.

How much do they understand?

I had a difficult time with my 4th year students understanding the assignment for the day. The didn't seem to understand what it was they were supposed to do, nor how to complete some of the initial steps.

I had shown them multiple examples of PowerPoint presentations that featured "new vocabulary" slides.

1. They knew about finding the lyrics,
2. they knew that there were words in their songs they didn't understand,
3. they knew how to find the meanings of these words online,
4. they knew how to make new PowerPoint documents,
5. but they didn't know how to take one of the words in their lyrics and copy and paste that word along with its meaning in Japanese into the PowerPoint document.

I had to go around to most of the Ss individually to show them what it was exacly I wanted. I should have been more clear about the process. I think next class I'm going to have to do a tutorial about assembling a Karaoke project. I should have done that today.