Why use ONE screen, when you can use TWO?

Most of us use a second screen for presentations and display purposes, but often with mirroring switched on - which can be helpful, especially in a teaching situation. mirroring means you have the exact same content on your screen as you do on the second screen.

BUT.

If you are presenting, it makes more sense to use the 2nd screen for your audience , and your laptop screen for yourself, your desktop clutter, and your awful desktop wallpaper.

Once Mirroring is switched off applications like Keynote (and even PowerPoint) will automatically 'know' this and and present this way automatically. You might have to adjust some preference settings if it doesn't do this automatically.

Much better.





But what if you're using Google Presentations because you want to collaborate on a presentation because you have several contributors? Well for starters, BRAVO for using ICT the way it SHOULD be used, now everyone can work on the same presentation, and you can avoid all the headaches with people trying to merge PowerPoint and Keynote presentations, different slides/sizes/versions/templates ... Using an online presentation tool is a much better way to manage this (Prezi, and SlideRocket are great as well).


... and when you're all finished, download the Google Presentation as a PPT file, open it in Keynote, make a few tweaks to font size, polish up rough edges etc. And run it as a Keynote.



But you can run a Google Presentation on a 2nd screen, like Keynote, here's how:

First make sure you are utilising the 2nd screen you have to have a 2nd screen plugged in for this to work. When you've done that, you're ready to proceed...

Now make sure that Mirroring is OFF: System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement (tab) > Mirror displays should be unticked...

Drag the 2nd display where you feel it makes most sense to the left, above or to the right of your Mac screen (that's the one with the white bar at the top) - in this example it's to the left.

Now to control anything on the 2nd screen just move it to where you positioned it, in my case I just drag it off the left of my Mac screen and it appears on the 2nd screen, usually via a projector.

Now You're ready to go. Open the presentation in your browser as normal, and view > start presentation.

Now grab it by the menu bar at the top and drag it over to the 2nd screen... Don't use full screen, instead use the green maximise button - and maybe drag the edges to fit... 

Almost there... on the 2nd (presentation) screen, click on the gear wheel and choose 'Open speaker notes'

Now grab that window and bring it over to your Mac screen ... 

Done, now you can use the speaker notes to control your presentation, and view notes on your Mac screen, while the presentation displays on the presentation screen.

Share your presentation with the world, but first...

Maybe there are people who missed your awesome presentation for very good reasons, (other than the prospect of boredom) but who would still like to see what they missed.

It's also possible that the those who did attend would appreciate being able to recap the basics.

So put that work you put into your presentation to good use and share the love, but and it's a big but.

Always avoid sending original documents if possible - it's generally a bad idea. As a rule, with all things digital, avoid sharing anything with an audience that can be misappropriated, messed up and/or monstrous (in size), such as an entire Keynote or PowerPoint presentation itself - why?

• Firstly the attachment is likely to be gargantuan (too big for email = anything larger than 1 MB IMHO) especially if you haven't resized the images*...
• Secondly you can't assume that the intended recipients will have the necessary software to run the presentation - or of they do, it may look like a canine's dinner, especially if they are missing certain fonts etc.
• Thirdly you are opening yourself to the possibility of recipients editing your presentation to say things you didn't, or passing it on to others who could/might...

Both Keynote and Powerpoint have the option to Export as images or video, which can then be easily shared as a slideshow with parents via Picasa, or iPhoto etc.

Keynote > Export > Quicktime (Movie) or Images or PDF (the PDF is still likely to be a hefty attachment though)

PowerPoint > Save as Pictures or Save as Movie

In a nutshell.

• Rather than sending Word or Pages Docs, use PDFs
• Rather than sending presentations, create a slide show or video.

How do I make it a PDF?

Any document on a Mac can be turned into a PDF, if you can print it, you can PDF it, Just chose Print, then Save as PDF.

PS

*To resize all the images in a presentation is easy as well:

Keynote > File > Reduce File Size

PowerPoint > File > Reduce File Size

How to use Picasa here.

Images

http://www.presentermedia.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/keynote_powerpoint-400x354.jpg

Use a UWCSEA template for your presentations

Communications have created several templates you can use, on the shared drive here:

College Admin/Communications/Communciations Resources/Communications Toolkit May 2012/Templates

Or you can download the UWCSEA Keynote Template from here, or here: http://goo.gl/ntyGO7

1. Open it in Keynote
2. Save it as a Theme (File > Save Theme...)
3. Open the Keynote you want to convert
4. Apply the theme you saved at step 3 (File > Choose Theme, scroll to the bottom)

Even better, now that theme is going to stay here for reuse next time... 



PS

You can turn any PowerPoint file into a Keynote by just opening it in Keynote, yes maybe a little tweakage will be needed, but what price is perfection, right? You'll thank me when your audience give you a standing ovation.


If you're looking for some fantastic images to grace your presentation, Communications have some great ones for you to use on the Media Drive and here:

Text Analysis and Visuals with Keynote

In Grade 6 English, our students are reading a book called the Big Wave and are spending time analysing quotes for how they illustrate the atmosphere of the book. To support their analysis they created a visual essay with a voice recording in Keynote. The aim of the activity is to scaffold and develop the students text analysis skills. 

The Process

A nice approach we have trialled is taking quotes from a book and then finding images that depict the atmosphere. The process of finding images helps students analyse the meaning of the quotes and think in a visual way. It was also a nice way to introducing the concepts of Creative Commons, Compfight, Flickr and the photo attribution.

Once students have found three appropriate images to support three quotes, they added these into Keynote and choose contrasting colours and appropriate fonts to layout the different slides. Once they have organised a layout we ask them to record their analysis using the voice recorder tool built into Keynote. They were allowed a few post-it notes to prompt their discussion, but the aim is to encourage kids to verbalise their thoughts in a less formal way and adhoc way.

Asking students to voice over their analysis is very powerful, as it captures the students thoughts in a different way than writing and supports different forms of communicating. Overtime these types of analysis tasks scaffold our students into writing deeper pieces of analysis, whilst at the same time being fun and a little different. 

A nice ending to this project was sharing the videos through a Picasa Web Album. This allowed the students to share each others work and celebrate each others successes. This time they really ran with the commenting functions, most students would have watched most of the presentations. In a traditional class setting it is impossible to show each students work to the class, but an album is a nice alternative.

Resources

• Creative Commons Images - Compfight is perhaps the best way to search for photos that can be borrowed. Once you have searched for a topic, click on the creative commons filter. These Creative Commons images can be referenced back to the original photographer using an attribution page as a last slide. 

• Voice Recording within Keynote - you have a record button in the top menu bar. This allows you to record using the internal microphone and narrate over the slide show. You need to click the arrow button to proceed to the next slide and then click exit once you are complete. You must record from the beginning to the end, and not try pause or re-record over the top. 

• Exporting as Quicktime Movie - Once students have saved the Keynote, they can click File then, Export. Choose the Quicktime option and then click save to place the movie on to the laptop.

• Picasa Web Album for Sharing - from the link picasaweb.google.com any staff member can sign in and create an album. You need to upload and image first using the top menu option. Once you have done this and labelled the album, chose the share option from the right hand sidebar. You can type students email addresses or just share to your class group from the contacts. See tutorial here on creating class groups in contacts. 

Grade 5 Arts Festival & Keynote

What do you get if you combine, 200 students, 9 teachers, 4 art teachers, 24 Macbooks, over 3 weeks with 1 digital literacy coach? 15 minutes of animated video to use as backdrop for the Grade 5 Voices performance.

Students worked independently to import scans of their own artwork into Keynote. Here they used the Alpha tool to remove the background, and then utlised a variety of animation controls (builds and actions) to create their masterpieces. The final collection of videos were stitched together in iMovie, with an edited score from our dance choreographer to create the final video that was used as the backdrop.

Here a few snippets from the three main sections of the performance.

Show me the Learning

I have been working with a few teachers lately, helping them develop tools to showcase student learning. With MacBooks in the hands of the student they can demonstrate understanding in a variety of creative and innovative ways.

1. Posting or commenting on a blog
2. Creating a Keynote with an oral narration
3. Recording a PodCast of oral recording
4. Creating a CommonCraft Video
5. Through developing a Mahara ePortfolio

Our counterparts at UWCSEA East, recently spent a professional development day exploring this concept. In groups they developed and documented techniques that could showcase learning in the classroom. The products of their work is available below. The resources created are nestled under the headings; Video, Words, Sounds, Images. 

UWCSEA East Show me the Learning

Overtime it would be great to see teachers using a variety of tools in the classroom, to help them discover the level of student comprehension and hence learning. In my opinion tools that allow students to speak, force them to expose their understanding in a way that is not possible in a written format. Traditional formats such as worksheets or essays don't allow students to showcase their work to the same degree. Sometimes it is easy for them to plagiaries ideas from the internet, with the presumption that they understand the material.

Below is a nice simple example of something a Grade 6 Humanities student developed this week. The keynote recording looks at the primary and secondary effects of Tsunamis, by using visuals. A selection of visuals was provided by the teacher Ms McGrath and the finished products were saved into a StudyWiz Gallery. 

Using movie tools to support students writing development

This was a workshop presentation I gave recently at the Singapore Teach IT conference. It was based on my teaching experience of using the process of making movies in the classroom with students to help them develop their writing skills. The workshop focused on the pedagogy of setting up writing scaffolds, the process of creating a video then a simple tutorial on using Keynote to create a short video.

More information about the workshop is available here - Teach IT Singapore.

Presentation Tools for Collaboration

This was one of my presentations at the recent Teach IT Conference in Singapore. A presentation about presentations does seem a bit odd. The session focused on ways to encourage a group to work together to create a presentation, then looked at alternative tools such as Prezi and Prezi Meetings to enable more creative and conceptual presentation tools.

More information about the session is available here - Teach IT Conference Workshop

Using Keynote with Music

Lisa Hill and team have been doing some great things with Keynote. Once the Keynote slides are prepared, students perfomed and were recorded into the Keynote presentation using the File > Record Slideshow feature.

When finished, the completed Slideshow is easily exported as a Short Film/Movie.

Graphic Novels in English - Digital Ideas

For the first time some English classes can now use Graphic Novels as one of the literary options. This is part of the redevelopment of the Language A and B courses. With this new change, we took the opportunity to work with Stuart McAlpine to trial some new tools that would support the students learning. The students have been looking at the book Blankets by Craig Thompson.

Digital Ideas:

We needed to use some tools which would allow students to take snippets out of the novel and to then explain the ideas and motifs that were being presented by the author. The simplest tool we discovered was Skitch. This allows students to take some pictures of the novel using the in-built camera on the macbook. Skitch is perhaps the easiest tool for students to add quick annotations to the image and then export the images back to any other program. A nice example is below.

Another idea to develop this further was getting the students to develop a simple narration that identified the motifs of snow, blankets and caves throughout several pages of the text. The technical aspects were intentional kept simple, and the students had to focus on the speaking. The basic process was to use Keynote to add several screenshots from either Skitch or PhotoBooth. Then students chose the play menu and then recorded the presentation with their commentary. The students had some simple notes to help them speak and worked in pairs. Here is a nice example from Christina Yang and Jo (copied with permission)

Reflection:

This was a good opportunity to work with the students, as the activities successfully transformed they way that the students learnt about the novel. Instead of putting ideas on paper and referring to the images from the novel, or perhaps using photocopies, they could annotate directly onto the pages and make specific links to elements of snow, blankets and caves that were being reinforced by the author Craig Thompson. These ideas could be saved back to their notes for revision.

The audio recordings also prompted the students to analyse the novel in more depth, than they would have otherwise. At the same time it also supported their oral presentation skills which are being assessed separately at the end of the course.

The downsides of the activity was the technical skill development. This always takes time, but I believe students have developed a simple skill set of annotating an image and developing a Keynote recording. The sharing of students work needed some refinement. In the end we shared these to the classes Google Site so they are accessible in the future. This required students to upload the video to their own Google Docs first and then fiddle with the sharing settings. They could then add the Google Video to the class page. This did end up with each students being able to watch the recordings, but the process was cumbersome.

Presentation to Staff:

Digital Ideas to support the ESOL student

Many of our students come from different language backgrounds and as teachers we are constantly finding ways to support them. Many of us have completed the English in the Mainstream Classes which focused on pedagogy and have lots of practical skills. The digital tools which are also available offer students more support and can help them learn more effectively in classes. This post will cover a series of basic tools that can be used with all students but especially those who are developing their English skills.

Text Handling Skills - Safari

• Using the Reader button in Safari allows you to strip away the distractions from a piece of text
• You can right click/secondary click on any piece of text within an Apple product to access some special services: Dictionary, Speech to Text. 
• Other options can be customised and added added through the menu bar - Safari -> Services then Services Preferences. Nice services to add might be Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track

Text Handling Skills - Preview

From within most applications including Safari, Pages and MS Word you can "print" these as in PDF format. Choose the Print Menu and choose to Open PDF in Preview.

Once you have opened the document in Preview you have a rich array of functions under the Annotation button. This allows you to highlight pieces of text, add your own ideas, and comments. You can also turn on the Services within Preview to highlight and send snippets of text to Sticky Notes. These annotation functions should be easier to use in the Lion Update.

Presentation Skills - using Keynote

Presenting information back to the class or teacher is one of the hardest aspects of being an ESOL student, and the final Interactive Presentation assessment can be very daunting. Using Keynote and the recording functions is a nice way scaffold students towards the final assessment. The essential point of using Keynote rather than iMovie is how the students are being assessed. If the focus is on the oral presentation skills and ability of communicate a message, then Keynote is ideal. If you want to assess the product and a polished movie then you would need to use a more advanced tool.

1. The basic task is to make a Keynote presentation
2. Student develop slides with a mixture of media to support the speaking part of the presentation. 
3. They can use words and animations to develop the presentation.
4. Finally they can use the Play menu and Record Slideshow tool to record audio over the presentation. Whilst the audio is recording the student can step through the slide and exit once they have completed this.  
5. Students can use the inspector button to remove the audio, to adjust the volume or to add a soundtrack.