TIPS COM

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

How to Place a Pattern Over Text in PowerPoint!

I have to say, when I realized how easy it was to put a pattern over text right in PowerPoint I was floored! I had been doing it in Photoshop forever and its much more time consuming!

More than half of the votes were for how to give text a pattern/texture!

If youre looking for some textures to put over your text, scroll to the end of the document to grab three free textures!

You can download this tutorial as a PDF by clicking this picture!

Note: This tutorial is hosted on Google Docs. To save it from there, just open the file and click File > Download to save onto your computer!

Now, for your three free textures!

To save the files, just click the image to get to the higher quality picture, then right click (or Mac: Ctrl + Click) to save the image onto your computer!

As for next weeks tutorial, Ill be adding a Smart Notebook option... how to "Erase to Reveal" an answer.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

ock Word Family Computer Smartboard Lesson

I know, I know... Im addicted to Prezi! I think I need to go to Prezi Rehab! But, every time I make a Prezi its so amazing to see the students reactions and it definitely motivates me to make more. Plus, the visuals in the Prezi help with vocab for my ELLs also!

Check out my new Prezi by clicking the picture below!

You can always find all of my other Prezis at the link below:

Designing Effective Presentations at USM!

Looking forward to facilitate another workshop at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) on 28 August, 2014. This time around we will be challenging ourselves to design engaging and effective presentations for learning and teaching...

ATTENTION!

Before we get busy with this workshop, lets introduce ourselves on a Padlet wall and connect in a Facebook group:

Padlet Wall
Please introduce yourself and add a cool picture of you (No login required). Also, it would be awesome if you could share in a few words what you desire most to learn from this workshop.
Facebook Group
Please use this Facebook group to ask questions (during and after the workshop), interact, share ideas, stories and resource links (URLs). Lets connect!

Created with Padlet

Even if you are not attending the workshop, you are more than welcome to introduce yourself on the Padlet Wall and join our Facebook Group. Your interactions, discoveries, insights and wisdom are most welcome!

WORKSHOP

Wouldnt it be awesome if your lectures were as impactful and engaging as Ken Robinson’s unforgettable TED talk about ‘How schools kill creativity’?

In this workshop, we will explore how to design effective and engaging presentations for learning, teaching and research. In the process, you will learn some sizzling PowerPoint tricks, ‘Gagne’s 9 Events of instruction’ for more effective presentation flow, discover other cool presentation tools, and how to engage, gamify and assess students during face-to-face learning sessions using various interactive web tools. It will be hands-on from start to finish, and you will be challenged individually and in groups to design unforgettable presentations that stick beyond the classroom or lecture hall.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

After this workshop, you will be able to:

Discuss how the brain learns.
Apply ‘Gagne’s 9 events of instruction’ to design effective and engaging presentations.
Design visually attractive slides using PowerPoint.
Use interactive web tools to engage, gamify and assess students during face-to-face learning sessions.

SLIDES

Here we go:

Designing Effective Presentations from Zaid Alsagoff

GROUP PROJECT

Here we go:

Yes, we can...right? :)

Hitchhiker’s Guide to Course Development

URL: http://www.midsolutions.org/cms/

"The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Course Development is designed as a resource for individuals with varying levels of course design experience.

Individuals new to higher education can use this site to help design their first classroom based course integrating technology where appropriate.
Experienced instructors, being encouraged to place materials within a learning management system, can use this site to decipher the differences between Web-Presence, Web-Enhanced, Web-Centric and Online courses and how to plan courses for online delivery.
Instructors of online courses, looking for new ideas and ways to improve their course, can use the site to improve content development by finding sources for pre-developed content and ideas to improve student centered learning.
Instructional Designers and Instructional Support Staff can use this site as a reference for themselves or as a resource for the faculty they support.

There are three (3) primary content sections within the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Course Development.

Planning Courses: Online and Classroom
Content Development
Assessment and Evaluation

As well as four (4) ancillary content sections.

Course Design Types: Web-Presence, Web-Enhanced, Web-Centric, and Online
Professional Resources and Associations
Other Tools and Techniques: Learning Management Systems and selected external resources
Web based Learning Units: links to learning units that available for adoption from around the internet."

This wonderful engaging interactive resource (using the yummi Moodle platform to run its courses) provides content and activities for the full course development cycle, which could benefit anyone interested in instructional design and (online) course development (A lot of juice!). We should thank those that have contributed and made it a reality including content developers Amanda Albright and JoAnn Gonzalez-Major, Site Designer JoAnn Gonzalez-Major, and the rest of the of authors and Universities that have shared their intellectual course development knowledge, skills and experiences on this site. They all deserve a "Honky Tonk Yamaguchi" thumbs up!

Some of the courses are available without requiring you to login, while others you are required to login. Though, it is worth creating an account enabling you to explore some of these wonderful courses and resources. Dont just read these words, go and check it out yourself :)

Still reading? Isnt learning wonderful today. If you are motivated to learn (hungryjack), the knowledge galaxy is there for you to explore and make a difference (much thanks to the open educational resources (OER) movement and amazing evolution of technology). Though, the tough part is sorting through the billions of pages and filtering out the juice. Get someone else (or thing) to do it for you! Google, blogs, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking, portals, journals, etc. Good luck :)

FreeScreencast Record Upload and Share 4 More Tools!

Link to FreeScreencast
Via Jane Knight

RECORD your screen, UPLOAD, and SHARE online with ease!

HOW?

Step 1
Download and install the free screencast recording software. Record and save a ready to go flash file to your computer or online:
Step 2
Create an account to share your screencast with the world. Free hosting of your screencast. Publish to the internet, and then embed your screencast in your website or blog.
Step 3
Thats it! Oh, do it again!

Example: How to embed a freescreencast.com screencast into Moodle

MORE FREE SCREENCASTING TOOLS?

Webinaria - Create and share software demos online with their screen recording/ screencast software.
Jing - Snap a picture of anything on your desktop. Record a video of what you do, or what you see, Instantly uploaded. Share in email, IM, or blogs.
Wink - a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users (No direct uploading services!).
CamStudio - Enables you to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs) . No upload services to the Internet(No direct uploading services!)!

The real problem today is not finding free learning tools, but figuring out which one to use. When I started this blog, I was wondering what to write about (and whether I could keep on discovering juicy learning stuff!). Currently, the problem is actually filtering out the learning juice overload, and zooming in on the really yummy stuff (according to my limited knowledge). Im Lovin it :)