Blame the Weather...

    I am much later at posting today, but I am going to totally blame the weather!  Everything is a bit off today because of the incoming storm.  With the storm in mind and how that can effect us getting our work done, I decided to share a couple of things with you today that will allow you to work on  presentations at home or school and you do not have to worry about emailing it to yourself or saving it to a usb drive just to be able to continue working on it when you leave either place.

     The site I want to share with you is called 280slides.com and it is an online presentation creator, much like PowerPoint.  This is not made by Microsoft so we cannot call it PowerPoint, however you do make the same type of slideshows with this site.  The slideshow that you create is saved online and you can access it from anywhere.  You can work on it and save, then go back later and make changes or add to it.  This is really great for those of us who are not able to stay after school to work on presentations and such, and who do most of their work from home.  I have tried this and I like it a great deal.  The best part, of course, is that it is free!  You can import existing documents, add media, publish to the web, and it will even download a copy of it in PowerPoint format.  You can show the presentation right from your web browser, so if you have a computer that does not have PowerPoint you can still share your presentation.

     Now to go along with the presentation software you will need a place to go to get some royalty free pictures to add to your presentation.  There are quite a few sites out there that you can use.  4freephotos.com is a good place to start.  Did you ever want to put in a great video from youtube.com but you can't because of the things around it that students just should not see?  You can use ClipGrab to easily save your favorite videos from sites like YouTube, Dailymotion or Vimeo. And you can convert these videos into “usable” formats like WMV, MPEG or MP3.  Then just pop that video into your presentation!  Honestly, you can go to Google and search for sites that have royalty free images, clipart, and sounds.  You just have to have the time available to go look around.  I plan on creating a list of sites that are easy to use that have the royalty free items for you to use in your presentations and even your teacher created worksheets for the students.  Just give me a few days.  I will update you when I have a good list ready for you.

     Now I know that some of you are already thinking that this is all just way too much work and your time would be better spent doing other things.  Integrating technology into your lessons does take time on your part but the extra time and effort really does help ensure that all of your students are getting the information they need to succeed.  I would never just dump this into your lap and tell you to figure it out on your own.  I am always available to help you in any of your technology endeavors.   Never hesitate to email me and ask questions, or if you work with me, pop down to the lab and tell me about what you want to do and we will come up with a plan.  Once you learn how to do these extra things you will see the benefits that it has to student learning and you will never go back to the standard way of presenting information to your classroom.
     Trust me.....do I ever leave you hanging?  LOL!