top 10 Blogging tips

Top 10 blogging tips

1. Always include a link to the originator of your knowledge.  LET THE MAN BE KNOWN
2. Exercise editorial discretion.  If there's anyone following you, it will be because your viewpoint helps them to find things they want to read. 
3. Make sure you care about your topic.
4. So many blogs to choose from.
5. Blogs are available anywhere.
6. Blogs can be accessed at the user's pace.  They can give you the tip-of-the-iceberg introduction to a subject and point the way to more.  An interested reader can pick an choose what interests them.
7. The interactive qualities of blogs aren't up to the standards of one-on-one face-to-face teaching, but they stand up well in comparison to what happens in a lot of overcrowded classrooms.
8. Blogs can allow students to self-publish at extremely low cost, and with a great deal of control over the way their ideas are presented.
9. As a centerpiece of a class project, a blog could provide a great way to distribute, collaborate, and collate the work.
10. Stealing others is alright when you link them in. You can't always have original ideas... can you?

10 Video tips

Top 10 video tips

1. The Khan Academy is fantastic and probably has already done what ever you're planning on doing. Look there then develop your own once you realize you are in trouble.
2. write a script and go over it a couple of times.  Not everyone can ad-lib well. Except for me...
3. Have fun with it.
4. Make a good background so you don't look like a ghost
5. Make sure that the camera angle and position is alright.
6. Now you're thinking about being taped. 
7. Moving your frame of reference can give your film the feeling of motion
8. You don't have a professional cameraman, so you're out of focus now. but thats ok most cameras can fix that on their own.
9. Relax and make your video
10. EDITTING TAKES A LONG TIME

10 things to know about Powerpoint

GREAT TIPS FOR POWERPOINT
1. PowerPoint shouldn't be something to read off of. It's a place for lecturers to allow for extra information and pictures to be developed for the audience while you speak.  Don't write every word you'll say on the Powerpoint.

2. Pictures are worth a thousand words. Pictures are a great way to interrupt a PowerPoint and allow students to  visualize the lecture.

3. Graphs can be an excellent way to also give information. Many times numbers look great but when you can see a Pie Chart you learn the same info in a more visual way.

4. POWERPOINT should not be the only method of teaching. It's Boring... use it in moderation

5.  Stay away from animations it takes too much time.

6. Stay away from transitions... kids in elementary school will probably like it because its a distraction but in high school and professional situations it just is too playful.

7. Clip art is not your best option. There are millions of pictures on the internet. grab one that works and remember to site it in a references portion.

8. Recording your voice is a cool experiment to use. It would allow you to send out powerpoints to students and allow them to view them on their own time with notes that you think are important to the powerpoint.

9. Powerpoints can be great for notes for students. printing out the powerpoints on note sheets or even giving the PowerPoints to students will allow them to use them as a great exam study guide.

10. Again, Lecture is not the goal here in schools today. Powerpoints are an excellent way for students to see what needs to be learned for a test but it leads students to drift off and get distracted with other things. Use them in moderation. as I stated in 4

Below are some other great tips found on http://www.techrepublic.com

1: Know how to use the program

Your users must know how to run PowerPoint. More important, they must know how to adapt if the technology fails. Don’t turn your users loose until they’re prepared to face the giant blank screen of death. This advice seems obvious, but many presenters are lost if something technical goes wrong. Don’t let that happen to your users!

2: Know the material

#1 can be a showstopper, but it shouldn’t be. In fact, if the presenter is thoroughly familiar with the material, a technological mishap won’t even matter. Make sure your presenters can carry onwithout the visual aids. The audience will appreciate the message just the same, perhaps more.

3: Practice

Knowing how to deliver the material can mean the difference between an ordinary presentation and a great presentation. Make sure users know how to use PowerPoint’s stopwatch feature to rehearse their presentations. PowerPoint records the time spent on each slide, as shown in. This information will help users stay on track during the actual presentation. The Rehearse Timings feature is in the Set Up group on the Slide Show tab. In PowerPoint 2003, it’s on the Slide Show menu.

4: Print a slide list

No matter how well presenters know their material, they can benefit from a slide list. First, it’s great for documenting the presentation. Second, it’ll help the presenter find specific data on the fly. (To jump to a specific slide, they can enter the slide number and press [Enter].)

To create a slide list based on slide titles, click the Outline pane’s Outline tab. For a shorter list of just slide titles, collapse the view by right-clicking the pane and choosing Collapse and then Collapse All, 

To print the list, click the File tab and choose Print. Click the second item under Settings and choose Outline from the Print Layout options. With Outline selected, click Print to print the outline view — your slide list. In PowerPoint 2007, click the Office button and click Print. (Choose Print from the File menu in PowerPoint 2003.) Then, choose Outline View from the Print What drop-down and click OK.

5: Keep it simple

Where text is concerned, less is more. Your presenters don’t want the audience reading slides; they want the audience listening to them. Your presenters are the text. Slides are just visual clues that support the discussion.

When a text-heavy slide is necessary, the presenter should hold the slide back until it’s relevant and then pause so the audience can read it. When creating a self-running presentation, users can relax this rule quite a bit.

6: Don’t rely too heavily on bullet points

Most experts recommend that you not use bullet points (which run amuck with PowerPoint’s layout defaults). Here’s the general rule: Each bullet point should be a slide of its own. If this is too overwhelming at first, show users how to organize the information using bullet points and then move each bulleted item to a blank slide. From there, they can develop that single thought using graphics and (some) subtle animation. Naturally, the presentation will have a lot more slides, but the overall presentation will be more effective and memorable. Removing bullets doesn’t tie your users’ hands; it frees them up so they can move beyond mere bullet points.

Following the advice in #5, you’ll get rid of the introductory text in Figure D, leaving some ugly bulleted text to revamp. If you move each bullet to its own slide, you generate six slides, but they’ll be more memorable. The introductory slide doesn’t need a bit of text — leave that for the presenter — but the message is clear and the audience will remember it.

To avoid the wrath that the above pronouncement is sure to unleash, I add this simple disclaimer: Bullet points aren’t bad or wrong. But use them sparingly because slide after slide of them is ineffective and boring.

7: Use Slide Master

Creating the presentation can be a laborious process, so efficiency matters. Show users how to configure the Slide Master first thing. It saves time up front and later. Users can quickly create a consistent look that’s easy to maintain. If they decide to change an attribute at some point, they need to change only the Slide Master, not every slide in the presentation.

Slide Master, is on the View tab in the Master Views group (Presentation Views in PowerPoint 2007). In PowerPoint 2003, choose Master from the View menu and then select Slide Master.

8: Use common fonts

PowerPoint doesn’t embed fonts by default. That presents a problem if the system that runs the presentation doesn’t have the presentation’s fonts installed. Windows will substitute a font, which might work; and then again, it might not. Users can avoid this potential problem by using common Windows fonts, such as Arial, Times New Roman, Tahoma, and so on. In fact, you might make a convention for using common fonts. Another workaround is to embed the fonts in the presentation. Doing so eliminates substitutions, but also increases the size of the presentation. This is one area where #7 can help: You can quickly avert disaster by updating the font via the Slide Master.

To embed fonts, click the File tab, choose Options (under Help), select Save in the left pane, and then check the Embed Fonts In The File option. In PowerPoint 2007, click the Office button and then click PowerPoint Options. In PowerPoint 2003, choose Options from the Tools menu.

9: Use legible fonts

Users, especially those new to PowerPoint, will often go overboard with specialty fonts, attributes, and splashy colors, just because they’re available. Help users avoid this pitfall by applying these basic guidelines to improve legibility:

• Make sure the font size is large enough to see in a conference or meeting room (start at 26 points and don’t be afraid to go larger).
• Use a sans serif font.
• Keep attributes, such as bold, underline, italics, and shadows, to a minimum. While these attributes may be effective in print, they can appear out of focus on a slide.
• When using color, contrast is good.
• Use dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background.Anything in between is a wash.

10: Avoid clip art

Clip art has a tendency to be overdone. It’s just too complex for presentation purposes. Your users will ask, “If I limit the text and don’t use clip art, what’s left?” Let them create their own simple graphics using basic shapes and symbols. It takes practice and patience, and don’t expect them to reinvent themselves as graphic design artists. Just introduce PowerPoint’s graphic tools and see what happens.

Of course, you don’t have to ban clip art entirely. Show users how to make small adjustments to simplify and improve clip art.