How Not To Use PowerPoint

Most of us have sat through too many bad PowerPoint presentations. People tend to put too much text on the screen and use features that distract the audience and take their attention away from the speaker. This short video illustrates my point in an entertaining way.

How NOT To Use Powerpoint By Comedian Don McMillan

source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLpjrHzgSRM

It is possible to create effective PowerPoint presentations. This Death by PowerPoint presentation gives some good pointers. You can also find good resources on Amazon.

Once you have a good presentation you may wish to share it with others. Slideshare is a nice website for doing this. This is one way to share your presentations with your students or conference attendees.

If you are aware of other good resources for creating effective presentations, please share them with us.

Web 2.0 and Higher Education

Many of you may be familiar with Web 2.0 or what is being called the read-write web. This short video (5 min) gives one a good overview of what is encompassed by the term. It includes web logs (blogs), news feeds, collaborative writing spaces (wikis), social networks such as MySpace or Facebook, podcasting, social bookmarking and other interactive collaborative technologies. It is changing the face of the web and it is also changing the way many people teach and learn.

The Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) has some good resources to help one understand how these new technologies are being used in higher education. A good place to start would be their 7 Things You Should Know About .... Series. They have written over 25 of these two-page summaries in the past two years. I suggest starting with the ones on blogs, RSS (news feeds), wikis and social bookmarking. At first you may wonder why this is so hot. It takes some time for the power of these tools to be appreciated. Don't give up too soon! Use Technorati or Google Blog Search to search for blogs on your favorite topic. Create your own blog with Blogger. Once you find some useful blogs that you'd like to monitor, consider using Google Reader to keep track of the feeds. It is an extemely powerful tool which will allow you to monitor many sites and it can save you hours of time. Have fun!

ITS Blog Begins - Good Resources for Higher Ed

The ITS Department at Elizabethtown College will begin using this blog to communicate with our clients. We intend to publish articles several times per week. Majors areas to be included in the blog are: infrastructure, security, media services, teaching and learning technologies, database support, web development, and training resources. It is our hope that this blog format will allow us to get information out in a timely manner. We encourage our readers to comment on the articles.

Let's begin with some great resources for staying up-to-date on technology in higher education. EDUCAUSE is the major professional organization for the support of technology in higher education. They offer a large number of online resources including articles, periodicals, blogs, podcasts and wikis. In addition to being a member of EDUCAUSE, the college also subscribes to publications of the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR). These are invaluable tools in assisting us in making sound decisions regarding IT services and facilities to meet the strategic goals of our faculty, staff and students.

Campus Technology also has a good site and a free monthly magazine. I just returned from their summer conference and will share some of the things I learned in future ITS blog articles.

Lastly, let me point you to the Chronicle of Higher Education's information technology articles. They also have a great blog known as The Wired Campus, that you may wish to subsribe to.