October 28, 2015

Using Prezi

Prezi and me....


Prezi

Don't you just love Prezi?.... and its GOODBYE to Powerpoint! 


What is Prezi?
This is a cool means of presenting professional looking presentations instead of the traditionally 'boring' applications like Powerpoint. Don't get me wrong Powerpoint has its uses but I feel in the subject of Graphic Design you need something more slick. Prezi uses one large canvas for you to create your presentation and allows you to zoom in and out of different parts of the canvas. 

I love this means of presenting, its snazzy and professional. I will definitely be using this instead of Powerpoint in the future. I feel the subject that I teach 'Graphic Design' warrants something like Prezi for delivering presentations. There is an expectation that everything needs to be designed and presented well and Prezi fits this bill.

In one of our lectures we were given the task in teams to research innovative strategies and we were tasked with researching 'Flipped Learning'.

Instead of just giving a lecture to the class about this strategy we decided to be innovative and deliver it using Prezie. We didn't have very long to put it together but it did what it was asked. Below is the Prezi presentation that we delivered. I know that some of the information shown is too much however if we had more time we could have definitely condensed this and tweaked it more. 



In my teaching I would definitely use this application to create presentations. 

Advantages to my teaching and my students:

  • It is easy to use
  • Looks professional
  • Sets standards
  • Portable - online or offline
  • Students can work in real time on the same Prezi project from home or class
  • Import pictures, maps and PDFs and use them as a canvas. 
  • Its compatible with lots of different file formats and it is easy to import photos and PDFs
  • You can also import information already created in Powerpoint to Prezi
  • It is free for students
Disadvantages
  • If there is a lot of zooming in and out this can cause the viewer motion sickness
  • You can not use Prezi offline to create presentations

This is definitely a thumbs up for me




October 22, 2015

YouTube


What is YouTube?

YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small (YouTube, 2015).

I enjoy lessons that incorporate Youtube videos, I think they make the lesson more fun and engaging. It has a massive database of educational resources. It is a good use of using video to inform students about a topic. 

Neville Brody


I have used this in my teaching and find it engages them more. It is ideal for creating discussions.  I have used this as Flipped learning so the student watches the video at home and the next day we can talk about it.

In my teaching I would definitely use this application. 

Advantages to my teaching and my students:

  • Its FREE
  • Portable - online or offline
  • Students can watch from home

Disadvantages

  • time consuming sourcing the correct content


This is definitely a thumbs up for me




Wordle

What is Wordle?

Wordle
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from words that you input. A word typed in more than other words will feature more prominently in the word cloud. You can change the font, colours and the layout of the word cloud if needed. Once these have been created you can easily print them out.


In my teaching I would not be using this application as I feel it is not at the correct level to use with Graphic Design Degree students. 

However for designing I may suggest another program if the students wanted to find an easy application to design and create 'word clouds'. The application suggested would be Tagxedo. I came across this whilst looking for Wordle. This application has more functionality and design features and its something they could use if a client requested a word cloud. They would of course have to tweak it in Photoshop.

Tagxedo 


Disadvantages of Wordle

  • both applications are fairly old and do not work with Chrome(Java) and there may be issues with Internet Explorer (Silverlight)
  • too basic for Degree students






Hot Potatoes!

What is Hot Potatoes? 

The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like. It is not open-source (Bogdanov, n.d.).

Hot potatoes is a good application to use for those possible under 16 years old to gauge their understanding of a topic. It is easy to use and as long as the computer being used has access to the internet then all students can access it.


In my teaching I would not be using this application as I feel it is not at the correct level to use with Degree students.




References

Bogdanov, D. S., n.d. Hot Potatoes. [Online]  Available at: https://hotpot.uvic.ca/[Accessed 4th January 2015].