It’s finally happened…to me

I’m excited to say that it’s finally happened to me.  Today, one of my presentations, “Comparing Instructional Design Models,” made it to the home page of Slideshare — even it was only for a little while.  Earlier today, I received the following email:

Unfortunately, I missed capturing the link on Slideshare’s homepage.  But I have to say that I am “Wowed!”  I heard all this today from a colleague and friend Kevin Thorn, who said he saw one of my presentations get tweeted.  So that’s pretty cool.  Somebody I don’t know (that’s Mike Taylor) found one of my presentations and decided to share it.  That’s awesome!  Glad I could help.  Since this was new to me, I decided to search twitter to see if I could find out who all were interested in my presentation today.  And I found this:

Now, I am pleased to say that my friend Kevin (that’s him above as LearnNuggets) retweeted the original tweet, and then it got retweeted multiple times.  The folks who retweeted the presentation include folks that I admire and follow myself, such as Cammy Bean at Kineo and Dr. Allison Rossett at San Diego State.
So, what’s the stuff that caused this reaction?  It’s this presentation:

I decided this semester that I would publish all my slides for my “Developing Interactive Learning Environments” course into Slideshare just to see what happens.  I guess I got my answer.

534 views.
5 favs.
2 embeds other than me.

So, why has this presentation resonated with others?  What did you like, dislike, or abhor about it? Thanks everybody for making me feel appreciated today.

The year’s best presentations: What can we learn?

My Technology Tools to Support Learning course is continuing our overview of elearning this week.  But I also wanted to link elearning to some of the other topics we’ve been discussing over the semester.  As we move from using Powerpoint for presentations to building interactive learning modules, I thought we would consider what we should bring with us from presentations.  Slideshare.net, one of the Internet’s largest archive of slides and presentations, holds a competition each year for the World’s Best Presentation.  The topic for the slides can be on anything.  The winner this year, Dan Roam, built a presentation about healthcare in America, and it’s all written on napkins (sort of).  See for yourself; I’ve embedded it below.

But the second prize, “Sheltering Wings” by Sarah Cullem, and third place,  “Feels Bad on the Back” by Mohamad Faried, are also excellent as well.  These are the overall winners.  There are also winners for different categories. So, you may want to take a look at those, too.  In particular, you might want to take a look at the one for education.  Here’s the list from Slideshare:

• 24 Reasons why Twitter Sucks! in Technology
• Eco-nomics, The hidden costs of consumption in Business in Business
• Simplicity in Creative/Offbeat
• A crime so monstrous in Education
• Who is this guy in About Me

The question…

So after taking a look at a bunch of these (and some of you may have seen them through Twitter, etc. as they came out), I’ve got some questions for you to consider.

1. What can we learn from these presentations about how to design and develop presentations? In other words, what’ the take away for instructional designers?
2. What can we learn about how to present a message to others, particularly when we’re not there to elaborate?
3. How do these (or some of these) presentations echo principles of message design, graphic design, and instructional design?  Or how do they break them usefully?

Let me know what you think.  Jump in and leave your ideas in the comments below.

Bookmarks for October 13th through October 15th

These are my Jumptags for October 13th through October 15th:

• Weebly – Create a free website and a free blog – Weebly has now added an education section. Weebly is perfect for creating classroom websites, student e-portfolios, and websites for assigned projects.
• Free Adobe Dreamweaver Tutorial | CSS Tutorial for Creating Layouts in Dreamweaver | Layers Magazine – This tutorial covers the process of building a CSS-based layout from scratch using Dreamweaver. Great beginner tutorial.
• Free Adobe Dreamweaver Tutorial | CSS Tutorial – Basics of Working with Cascading Style Sheets | Layers Magazine – This tutorial covers the basics of creating CSS in Dreamweaver using the CSS Rule dialog. Great intro.
• Adobe Flash Tutorial | Creating an interactive story in Adobe Flash part 2 – A simple tutorial for moving around Flash CS3. Part 2.
• Adobe Flash Tutorial | Creating an interactive story in Adobe Flash – A simple tutorial in two parts for moving around Flash CS3.
• Flash CS4 |Timeline Animation | Motion Editor | Layers Magazine – With Flash CS4 now has auto-keyframing, a full-featured motion editor, and—most importantly—the ability to animate each property of an object separately from one another.
• Open Access Educational Technology journals – George Veletsianos – One of the resources developed for my students is a listing of open access journals (name, url, and RSS feed) that publish papers on the nexus between technology and education (educational technology, instructional design, e-learning, online distance…
• Best Time-Tracking Application: Klok – Time management – Lifehacker – Earlier last week we asked you to share your favorite time-tracking applications and then we rounded them up for your review.
• The speed of information – The speed of information between neurons.
• 33 Websites For Vector Images Download | Pro Blog Design – Here is a list of free vector images for download, if you're designer and look for vector images for your design project, you can simply download this…
• 3 Ways To Find The Best Website Color Scheme – Learn how to pick a website color scheme that keeps visitors engaged. Includes a list of questions to ask clients and a color psychology cheat sheet.
• Using John Keller’s ARCS model to motivate online learners « Onlignment – ARCS provides a good summary of the issues to be considered when designing a learning intervention. In particular it makes sense to me when putting together a live online learning event.
• Live Online Learning – a facilitators guide « Onlignment – To download your free copy of “Live Online Learning – a facilitator’s guide” just sign up for the free newsletter.
• Healthcare Napkins wins World’s Best Presentation Contest 2009 | SlideShare Blog – Thousands of presentations are uploaded to SlideShare everyday. But some catch your eye from the moment they get uploaded. Tha's the case with the winning
• 5 Steps to Slide Design for Non-Designers by Ellen Finkelstein | SlideShare Blog – I’ve come up with 5 steps that you can take to create a presentation that will work, even if you’re not a designer.

The power of stars

About a year ago, I found the following slideshow, creating a post about it on a previous —now somewhat defunct — blog. So, I’m reposting it here. It will be able to get archived and found easier. Plus, maybe it will resonate with you.

Consider this slide show on Slideshare: “Knowing.the.World.We.Live.in.” In this slideshow, review it at full screen so you can read the legends for each slide. Another site called this “The Power of Stars.” The message is powerful.  How do you think the message in the presentation is interpreted through visual literacy, graphic design and message design?