Hi People! I'd like to share with you a Webquest I created last year. This is the first one I made so it's not perfect. Anyway, it's something

Pecha Kucha Pecha Kucha something to think about

Well, among all the tools we have been talking along the year there was one of them which I found particularly conflictive. I don't know why but since we talked about Pecha Kucha is has been on my mind because I was afraid of it. Sounds silly, but it's true! As it wasn't very clear to me what a Pecha Kucha is I thought it would be a headache to prepare one. So, I decided to llok for more information about it in teh web and I found out it's not exactly rocket science. I just need to give it a try and then practise, practise and practise as one of the men in the followin list of tips says.
I came across these practical tips that wil help us to create a Pecha Kucha. It seems a lot to read, but it's not that much and they really give a clear idea of Pecha Kucha that will help us a lot.

Tips!!
1- Choose a simple topic

Many times, presenters get tempted to choose complicated topics that need so many facts to be explained even before you get to the topic. Let’s face it – not everything in this world is simple enough to be explained in less than 7 minutes. But you can simplify your topic, or you can choose another topic that is simple enough to be explained within that time frame.

Once you have chosen a topic, leave out the un-required and focus on your message – you should be able to condense the gist of your entire message in one, simple line. Then elaborate as required

2- Start with an outline

As with generic presentations that are not limited to Pecha Kucha’s 20x20 rule, you should start with an outline. You can call your outline a structure, a story, etc. Charles Greene III prefers to call the outline an “analog”. He uses 3 x 5 inch note cards for his main ideas. He restricts to one idea per card, thus each card represents a potential slide. Under each main idea, he jots 3 quick sentences about that idea.

Using cards is a great idea – but if you want, you can even use some paper sheets, PostIt notes, an iPad or tablet, or even Microsoft Word, Evernote, or OneNote. Work with whichever medium makes you feel comfortable, as long as you end up with a rough outline. 

3- Tweak your outline

It’s now time to reorder the content in your outline. Then remove what is not required – you may also want to combine some parts of the outline into one slide, or divide others as required. Whatever you do, think about your audience – you must include what they would like to hear rather than what you want to say.

Charles Greene III adds about how he works with his note cards: "The cards were sorted, shifted and removed until I had my final 20 slides that told my story. Strong visual images were selected to go with each topic. I developed my story flow from the note cards".

4- Make your slides

You are now ready to import your outline into PowerPoint or any other slide program. PowerPoint can import outlines to create slides, but even if you do not want to import your outline, you can still create slides from your text content.

Most often, your text content will be restricted to your slide titles. You should end up with 20 slides -- play and watch them. Do the slides build up well with your message, one after the other? If the answer is no, then go back and redo them until you are happy – there's no sense in moving beyond this step unless you are happy with the content and sequencing of your slides.

5- Add pictures

Add pictures to your slides that are relevant to what you will speak about. Ric Bretschneider, formerly Senior Program Manager for PowerPoint at Microsoft advises: "Pictures! Graphics! Even black slides! Text used sparingly. The most successful Pecha Kuchas don't use much, if any text."

6- Practice

Then practice as much as you can. And practice again.

Charles adds: "I found that even with the little information that I had chosen to say, it was too much. In actual performance, the flow is very quick. To not have the sense that I was racing toward the 6minute 40 second mark, I had to take out some words. I also had three slides towards the end that covered one topic. This gave me a place where I could "hover" to adjust my timing and flow. I highly suggest a "hover" space."

Ric adds: "Do practice so you know one or two points that each slide brings to your story naturally. You can perform free-form easy if you know what you absolutely need to include to support your upcoming points."

7- To animate or not?

You’ll have to make a decision about this one -- whether you should animate objects on your slide, or not. Also do you want to use slide transitions? Animation is movement, and movement pulls the eye of the audience away from you to the slides. 20 seconds is too short a time for them to refocus on you during that particular slide, and that explains why you must decide whether animation will add value to your slide, or otherwise.

Ric adds: "Do not animate. Aside from potentially messing your timings up, animations are an unanticipated pause in your presentation while another point is disclosed. Your slides are bite sized enough, use them exclusively for disclosure. OK, that said you can break that rule if you aren't using the animation to break out talking points, more ambient animation. But even so, challenge the assumption that you need to do that, because you do lose the audience a little each time they have to analyze a change to your visual."

8- Practice again

Yes, it is time to practice again. With less than 7 minutes to present, you can afford to practice more often. Even if you end up using 2 or 3 minutes more in a Pecha Kucha presentation, that won't be acceptable or even possible using the format -- so you must have time on your side, right down to the minutest level. That sort of sync with your slides can only be achieved with repeated practice.

Charles adds: "Afterthoughts -- Practice, practice, practice! That's the only way to get the presentation to flow like a conversation. Give some "performance" to the presentation. Be a bit dramatic. Add your own personal flair. Hopefully, you are presenting a topic that you care about as your personal love for the subject will make a difference. Oh, did I mention practice?"

9- Love your audience

Ric raised a very significant issue, about being human with your audience.

He added: "With all this focus on the mechanical and your presence it's easy to forget to really talk to the audience. Make contact, converse, be warm, and be human. It's one of the more intimate presentation styles if you let it be."

10- Everything else

You already heard about the benefits of practicing but remember to let your free flow work as well -- depend 80% on practice and a script, but let the other 20% of being free within a framework also work for you! So in effect you will know your slides like the back of your hand, but you should be able to move your hands as you like.

My Experience using Presentations in Classes

Last Monday we had to present the classes we had prepared using Presentations. With my partner we organized a really nice and, I think, eye-catching presentation which included an Audio file as an important resource and supporter of the Prezi presentation. Buuut, we forgot something essential: speakers!!! It was a little mistake that we will remember and we're gonna learn from it, for sure. Although we were able to get ones from the lab, they didn't work :( until we got some new ones that allowed us to present the class. I really liked preparing the class because I enjoy working with new technologies. However, it's extremelytime consuming when you're using a software for the first time. And gettting high quality images took us a lot of time. Beside the point, the trip aorund England was very well organized LOL
As regard my classmate's presentations, I loved aaaall of them. They were funny, engaging and enjoyable. I think all of them made a great job. And as we all have used different tools it will be easy now to share our knowledge on each tool to help each other :)

The Experience of Working with Prezi

The assigment for our Second Practical Work was to prepare a class whch will include a Prezi or PowerPoint Presentation. I was working with Emiliana and we decided to use Prezi because it's a new tool for us and we wanted to experience it. At the beggining we went through hell! It was too dynamic for us. But with tons of patience and after trying and trying and trying with got the main idea and finally we were able to use it almost as if we were native digitals. However, we came across a new problem... I was preparing the Prezi presentation using Emiliana's account and I was supposed to finish it at home! Luckily, we discovered that Prezi allows you to share the presentation and allow other people to edit it. So, we shared it and now we can work collaboratively on it. It's great! Now we feel much more confortable with it and we also can work together from home. I'm glad with it :)

To share files...

Hi people! I'd like to share with u a tool that I got to know thanks to Emiliana and that I consider is really helpful. It allowed me to share in the blogs some files. It's MediaFire and here you have a brief description of what it is and how to use it:

What is MediaFire?:

MediaFire is an extremely popular free file and image hosting site.

What can I use MediaFire for?:

You can use MediaFire to upload multiple files (and share them with other people), including images. In fact, you can use MediaFire to create an image gallery of all your favorite photographs.

If you're away from your home computer and you need to access a file, you can upload it to MediaFire ahead of time, and download it from wherever you might be.

How does MediaFire work? :

If you want to upload a file to MediaFire:

• Navigate to the MediaFire home page.
• Click on the big green "upload files to mediafire" button.
• You'll get three options at this point. You can create a free MediaFire account, which you can use to manage your uploaded files in the future; you can keep going and just upload the file without an account; or, if you already have a MediaFire account, you can log in.
• Browse to the file on your computer that you would like to upload.
• You can upload multiple files at this point, if you wish
• Click to upload; you can manage your files at this point.

What happens once my file is uploaded to MediaFire?:

You'll see a link for your uploaded file that you can copy and paste to share with other people. You can add more files to this folder if you wish.

Ok, that's more or less the general idea of MediaFire. A disadvantage that I found is that it doesn't "reproduce" (I don't know if that is the right word for it) animated GIFs. It shows them as inanimated pictures. 

In my previous post it didn't mean a setback for me because I didn't think of sharing it with the students in that way. They'd receive it as a powerpoint file in their computers. I uploaded it in Mediafire just to share it with you.

PowerPoint Games

Hi People! when Letizia presented us the games on Powerpoint I thought: "mmm... that's gonna be hard". But I was really interested the same. So, when I went back home I looked for some help and guess what?! it's not thaaaat hard. Here I leave you a Tutorial that will helpyou a lot. It's basic but useful. Sorry it doesn't have sound. I don't know why the publisher has recorded it in mute. He is also too fast at showing the steps what makes it hard to follow. But I liked it and this is my new challenge :D I really want to prepare a lesson with it :D

so, this is the video: Tutorial to make Powerpoint Games

PowerPoint Homework

Hi there! I decided to use PowerPoint not as a presentation program but as a way to make homework more interesting. We know students hate homework so I decided to organize it in a way they'll find it more engaging and they will consider it a Game. That's why I created this Powerpoint.
The aim of it is to revise some vocabulary about the body and learn some new words. In the 2° slide they have an image with the names of the parts of the body. In the 3° slide they have a picture where they have to complete with the new words they have learnt. The  instructions are in the box below it. In the following slide they have a character the teacher created as an example of what they will be supposed to do later. It has a brief description with structures they already know. In slide number 6 they are provided with an empty face and some  images and GIFs they have to use to create a funny face. They will also have to provide the description of the character created. Then, they have to save it as a GIF file and send it to the teacher. In the next class, the teacher will present all the characters in the projector and students will vote for the funniest one.

Something to take into account:
- the teacher should show the activity in the projector BEFORE give it to them as homework in order to make it clear.
- the presentation will be send to the students as a file, and they will send it back as a modified file withe their answers. They will also send the 6th slide as a GIF and the teacher will create a presentation with all the Characters to carry on the competition

This is the activity: My Body!


Feel free to comment and ASK :)

Comic Strips

Hello Everybody! I've just found some websites that allow you to create comic strips and I thought it would be great to be used in class. It's not that easy. I'm still learning but I found them today. We can create some strips to present a new topic in an interesting way or we can ask the students to create their own. For example, whent teaching teh Simple Present for Routine sthey could create one describe their routines by using this tool.
There are many sites. Some of them do not have much variety of characters or frameworks. In most of them you need to create an account. I liked this one because it allows you to print the strip. Anyway, it doesn't have a variety of frameworks. But we can continue searching on this until we find one that fit our necessities.

Strip Generator

Hope you like the idea,a nd if I find onether one I'll post it :)

Presentations to Narrate Stories

Hi People! After my class on Monday I kept thinking about the uses of presentations in the classroom and I remembered some videos I've seen on the Internet. These videos are fairytales narrated through Images, Sounds and Texts. Then I thought it would be great if we can make students read some stories through these videos, and even more, create their own stories. I'll let u one that I liked although it's really simple. We can make them much more interesting. Anyway, this is good to start... 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Hope u enjoy it!

Hi People! I'd like to talk u about a tool I've used last year and that I found really interesting. I love working on projects. I think they are a great way of evaluating the process of learning and teaching through different steps that need to be achieved in order to be able to continue. That's way I'm so interested in WebQuest.

Now, let me explain what Webquests are and then I'll upload one that I created last year:
This information is taken from: http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/webquests/index.html. I'll only type the key idea of a WebQuest, but I invite you to search more information about them on this website.

What is a WebQuest?

A Webquest is an inquiry-oriented online tool for learning. It's a classroom based lesson i which most or all the information that students explore and evaluate comes from the World Wibe Web. 

Beyond that, WebQuests:

- can be as short as a single period or as long as a month-long unit;
- usually(though not always) involve group work, with division of labor among students who take on specific roles or perspectives;
- are built around resourdes taht are preselected by the teacher. Students spend their time USING information, not LOOKING for it.

From my point of view, I'd  be great to use WebQuest as a final project to be presented at the end of the year, and it'd consist of a task for each syllabus taught. At the end of the course, Students would have a final product with the contents they've learnt during the whole year. Just a thought. oh! what's more, we could engage student's attention with an interesting topic they might know but they could make a deeper research on it. In my case, I choose "Alice in Wonderland". Then I'll present it to you ;)