Thing 5: Beyond Power Point

I admit that I use power point frequently while teaching.  I think it's a great medium for communicating biology concepts, because images are so important to learning this content: diagrams of complex processes like the carbon cycle and microscopic phenomena like cellular metabolism are brought to life with images.  I have a lot of time invested in my power points, and spend quite a bit of time refining them each year, so I hesitate to begin using another format.  I have been aware of Prezi for perhaps a year now, and while I find the format interesting because of it's "otherness", I am not convinced at this point that it's "better" than a traditional linear power point.  However, "better" is not necessarily the point - variety can be a good thing.  So I created an account and made a Prezi.  I noticed that one can upload power point slides an manipulate them, so I tried using a portion of my slides on water pollution.  This Prezi focuses on 4 primary types of water pollutants, symbolized by the acronym TONS.

The transition was not smooth.  One thing I discovered is that much of my text had to be re-formatted in order to fit onto the Prezi slides.  I don't have a lot of time to work on it now, but at least I have the basics down.  There's a fairly steep learning curve here, it appears, and I consider myself fairly computer-savy.  Anyway, here it is.

Thing 7: Videos

I came across TubeChop and similar services last year, so I tried it for a couple of videos.  I wanted to show a short segment from a a ~30 minute show, highlighting how a "retired" landfill was becoming host to a type of solar panel that can be unrolled like a giant tarp.  I was planning to insert the clip here, but I realized that the version of my power point available on the school web page is older, so I can't access it from home.  Instead, here is a short clip of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.




At school I have a (paper) file with some other similar services to TubeChop - when I have a chance to retrieve I will share the names of those sites.

One problem with TubeChop - I have been unable to find a way to embed edited videos directly into a power point presentation.  You can do this with a full-length YouTube video, either using a somewhat complicated process, or by installing an add-on called i-Spring Free.  The latter makes it quite easy to insert videos in a slide - which allows for smoother playback (if you are using power point already) and eliminates the potentially distracting comments and "related" videos that appear alongside a video on the main YouTube site.

Thing 4: Cloud storage

I have been using DropBox for several years now.  The primary reason that I started the account was not for backup or accessibility of files (which seem to be the primary reasons that people use systems like Dropbox) but for file sharing.  I use rather large power-point files for class, especially for my AP Environmental Science students.  These files include a lot of information that is not found in the textbook, or is organized in a different way, so I wanted to provide access to the presentations for the students.  The problem is that the school website has a size limit on files that we can upload, and these presentations far exceed the limit.  Dropbox has a feature that allows uploaded files to be shared with other web users, so I add a link to these files from the test review section of my school web page (see here for my class APES page, which has links to multiple files shared on Dropbox, or here is a direct link to a presentation on Geology).

An alternative that I discovered recently is Google Drive.  Actually I have also been using this platform to share files for a few years too, for a church group and for the Cross Country team.  But I realized recently that if you install Google Drive on your computer, you can automatically sync/back up 15 GB of space for free.  This is not enough if you have a lot of photos to back up (that's where Flickr or other services come in) but would be a good option for lesson plans, student handouts, etc that one might work on at home and at school.

Sarah noted that Dropbox does not seem to work properly when installed on school computers.  I noticed the same thing, but since I am primarily using it for file sharing that did not really matter.  You can log in to your dropbox account and upload files using a web interface instead of dragging them into a folder on your computer  I am not sure if Google Drive will present similar problems on the school computers - I have not tried it yet.  But it is working fine from my home computer, where I have 1.9GB uploaded an synced.  Below is a screen shot of what the interface looks like.