to spam or not to spam

Nicole from rivendell.pressresults.com left a comment about whether I was still happy with Zoho Wiki.  My spamdar went off when a website check revealed the PR/Marketing focus of the company, forcing me to decide not to approve the comment.  However, the non cynical side of me is telling me that I’m overreacting (my sincere apologies, Nicole, if that’s the case), therefore I’ve decided to compromise and acknowledge the question–I’m very happy with Zoho Wiki, and will be posting about it again as a useful tool for instructors who want to create quick and easy course webpages.

There…I feel much better.

Keeping on top of your library materials

Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to log into your library account to see if your materials are coming due (or past due)? I’ve been using a great little application called Library Books that links to my library’s catalogue and downloads the list of books I have checked out. This means I never have to log into the library system to check on the status of my materials: an unobtrusive little icon up in the menu bar notifies me. (In this image, I have three library books checked out. To see the titles, authors and due dates, I just click on the icon, and a little window appears, showing me all this info. When a book is nearly due, the little black star turns red.)

Library Books supports tons of libraries around the world. Unfortunately, it’s for Mac only. Pity. If you know of a PC variant, please let me know.

I am always deeply impressed by things that just work. Harold Chu’s Library Books is one of those things.

in the spirit of good visuals…

supermario cupcakes

Perhaps I’m revealing my age, but I love these Atari era inspired cupcakes by Hello Naomi (via Boing Boing).

Pecha kucha and the end of death-by-PowerPoint

While it is probably too much to hope that pecha kucha (pronounced peh-chak-cha) will revolutionize the way slideware is used in the classroom, instructors and students should know that pecha kucha is great for keeping slideware presentations focused and the audience’s interest up — arguably two of the biggest challenges facing PowerPoint presenters.

 

Like haiku or the sonnet, pecha kucha imposes a strict form on the content. In this case the medium is the slideware presentation. Presenters must show twenty slides — no more, no less — and show each slide for twenty seconds; again, no more, no less. This permits you a mere six minutes and forty seconds to deliver your presentation.

 

The 20 x 20 format is not meant to restrict so much as to force you to be creative and to stay focused on what’s really important. There is no time for digressions. The pace is quick. The presenters I have seen tend not to read from their slides, thus eliminating redundancy. They say what they have to say then move on the next slide, which is always only seconds away. The audience, aware of the format, anticipates the next slide change, and is never left wondering, “when will this end?” Discussion should come afterwards to allow the presenter to flow uninterrupted. When you’re done, podcast it. Blog it.

 

Preventing death-by-PowerPoint is only one of pecha kucha’s advantages. The concise and brief format also means you can also rethink your class time. What to do with the leftover time? This is a nice problem to have. Perhaps the best reason to try giving a pecha kucha presentation yourself is you will have to rework — and rethink — your content.

 

Pecha kucha nights are now held in major cities all over the globe. Participants can present on any topic. The events are social, informative, fun and frequently licensed. That people voluntarily attend events in which they sit through as many as 15 PowerPoint presentations speaks volumes about the effectiveness of the form. Many of the examples on YouTube are well worth a look.