A List of The Best Free Digital Storytelling Tools for Teachers 1- ZimmerTwins It is all about creative storytelling. ZimmerTwins is a web2.0 tool that allows students to give vent to their imaginative powers and exercise their storytelling skills from early stages to advances ones. 2- Digital Story Telling in The Classroom This section provides resources and materials for teachers to use with their students in storytelling. 3- Story Bird This is an awesome website that allows students and teachers to create short art inspired stories to read, share or print out. 4- Someries Someries is a fantastic storytelling site . 5- PicLits This is another awesome website where students can choose a picture and start drawing or writing a text on it to create a story. 6- Generator This is a creative studio space where students explore the moving image and create their own digital stories to share with others. 7- Capzles This is where you and your students can create rich multimedia stories with videos, photos, music, blogs and documents.
Stop your presentation before it kills again! « Kicking ass is more fun | Main | Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak » Stop your presentation before it kills again! Sometimes the best presentation is... no presentation. Ditch the slides completely. Put the projector in the closet, roll the screen back up, and turn the damn lights back on! Especially if the slides are bullet points. Or if critical data is presented in a form that leads to brain-death, talked about by Tufte in this Wired article, and in more detail in his book, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. The second you dim the lights and go into "presentation mode" is the moment you move from a two-way conversation to a one-way lecture/broadcast. Then there's the phenomenon of "talking to the slides", where the speaker is constrained into following a script. But given how many people hate slide presentations, why is it universally assumed that where there is "a talk", there's PowerPoint (or its much cooler cousin, Apple's KeyNote)? I know the arguments in favor of slides: True.
Presentation Zen PowerPoint Backgrounds Tom Peters on Presentations In May, Tom Peters gave his insights on what he calls "Presentation Excellence" on his website. Great, great, great stuff from a guy who knows a thing or two about speaking to a crowd. Tom also posted his tips — 56 in all — for Presentation Excellence. It's all great advice from someone who has a lot of experience speaking to groups big and small. Below I list what I believe are the "best 11" of Tom's 56 tips, just to give you a quick look. (Download the Presentation Excellence PowerPoint document from Tom's site). My "Best 11" of Tom Peters' 56 Tips (Tom's words in bold) (1) Total commitment to the Problem/Project/Outcome Authenticity. (2) A compelling “Story line”/“Plot” There's that word "story" again. (3) Enough data to sink a tanker (98% in reserve). Research. (4) Data are imperative, but also play to Emotion. The brain has a logical left hemisphere an emotional right. Absolutely crucial. (6) No more than ONE point per slide! Simple visuals for the screen, always. Right. (8) SMILE!