Metamedia

Scott Leslie's 'Open Educator As DJ' Presentation

Here are some resources from Scott Leslie's wonderful keynote presentation this morning at the 2009 Teaching w/ Technology Idea Exchange.

Some Primary Resources

• His deli.cio.us network
• SOL*R Shareable Online Learning Resources
• and the Wiki Append WordPress plugin that powers it
• The Edtechpost wiki page with extended discussion and links to all the various tools he mentioned during the presentation

Presentation Links

• Prezi presentation 'slides'
• Ustream of presentation

Nancy White's "Graphic Recordings" of Presentations - Better Than Notes

Nancy White, among many other things, makes "Graphic Recordings" of talks and presentations: drawing in color on large pieces of paper on the walls behind and sometimes around the presenters, in real time as they talk. 

The result is a visual notebook of the presentation and its themes. This technique can also be used to facilitate group discussions, brainstorm ideas, or even be presentations themselves.

I met Nancy for the first time and saw her do this at Northern Voice 09 last weekend. The results were varied and beautiful.

 Today, during what is a routine and pedestrian weekly staff meeting, I began to make some notes on a piece of paper with a pen - but within a couple of minutes I began to draw, and then to do a graphic recording of the themes of the meeting. 

This was inadvertent - but fascinating, since I can now look at the visual record of the meeting and know what we discussed and how. 

Normally, my only record of business meetings is a short list of my own action items scribbled down, or crudely tapped into my iPhone.  It turns out that simple paper and pen are the way, deep and rich, even without color. 

Below is the result - my very first one. Most of it will not mean much to you, but that's part of the point - it is highly contextual and you weren't there to have that experience and understand the context. Looking at it brings back the context and conversation to me. I plan to practice this on a regular basis.

So, thank you, Nancy, for an introduction to a wondrous new tool.

On Meeting and "Unmeeting" at Northern Voice 09

I just returned from Northern Voice 09 in Vancouver BC and it was an astounding - though exhausting - affair.

Unmeetings

But I discovered something fascinating at this conference I had never seen before: the power of Twitter to help us not just meet people, but to "unmeet" them too - that is to connect to them through the backchannel of the conference, but not to meet or talk to them face to face. 

I call this "umeeting" - for lack of a better term - on analogy with "unconference."

And one thing about Northern Voice that really gladdened me was the absolute pervasiveness of the Twitter backchannel, and it's creativeness, funniness, and helpfulness.

I was able to connect with a couple of dozen people as they responded to my comments and I responded to theirs -- people as diverse as @FierceKitty with her red shoe fetish, Ben Wong @mostlygeek who demoed his clever architecture for a new Twitter service, @OnlineStrategy whom I saw but never got to talk to, @kellyoyo, @everydaylife, @bgilgoff, and @sillygwailo who spoke on Twitter in one session, among others.

I ended up following several interesting people on Twitter and gained new followers too, mostly I am sure from my bizarre comments on the proceedings.

Meetings

Of course, besides all the usual talks, presentations, and sessions, it was for me an important time to finally meet many friends in the educational technology realm.  I had met most of them online, often on Twitter, but Northern Voice was my first chance to meet them face to face.

And I did meet for the first time in real life @sleslie @brlamb @cogdog @bgblogging @injenuity @dlnorman @lesliemb @NancyWhite whom I knew from Twitter and whose blogs I read and whose work I know about. This was a wonderful time to cement and deepen relationships begun through the "ambient intimacy" of Twitter and the intellectual discourse of (at least the educational tech part of) blogosphere.

I did meet one new person the old fashioned way: randomly sitting next to each other at lunch and striking up a great conversation - but first thing @Braddo and I did to stay in touch was follow each other on Twitter and chat that way the rest of the conference.

One thing for sure, Northern Voice showed me that the backchannel is not an aberration, but a feature of every conference, and is here to stay.

The $10,000 question is: how will speakers and presenters adjust to this?

How will I adjust to this next time I speak?

I've been doing presentations for nearly twenty years and I have to say I find this new backchannel exciting for the possibilities it brings to connect to an audience.

Indeed, the very notion of "audience" - from Latin audire meaning those who listen - is in peril. Good!

PowerPoint Use and Abuse Resource Page

I've finally gotten around to creating a resource page on doing better presentations in class, called PowerPoint Use and Abuse.

I've done a lot of presentations both corporate and educational, and enjoy helping students improve theirs. Here's my introduction to that topic:

It’s that time of the term for giving class presentations once again. Even when you have done a good project, how do you make an equally good presentation?

The main reason most PowerPoint presentations don’t stand out is lack of preparation. You already know the answer to that problem: know the content on your slides well and rehearse the presentation so your audience knows you know it.

But even when you are prepared, you can still make a bad presentation by failing to follow some simple guidelines for good presenting technique.

And here is my own commentary on the Ten Commandments of PowerPoint:

The Ten Commandments of PowerPoint

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: teaching keynote)