Audio: LeMasney on How to use Powerpoint at Rider University Media Server

Audio: LeMasney on How to use Powerpoint at Rider University Media Server
I gave a presentation on How To Use Powerpoint today to a semi-packed room in the new Faculty Staff Training center in FA 113. Powerpoint was discussed in some detail, but of course, we talked about alternatives to Powerpoint, ways to avoid death by Powerpoint, Google Docs newest addition, Presently, and related topics. Take a look at Rider technology training site (log in as a guest if you wish) at http://www.rider.edu/training and click on the How to Use Powerpoint course to follow along with the audio if you want the whole effect. - John.

FDD 2006: OSS tools for Concept Mapping

http://ghost.rider.edu/podcasts/fdd_0605_oss_conceptual_frameworks.mp3 is a podcast of my portion of the Rider University Faculty Development Day presentation on Concept Frameworks that I presented along with Reed Schwimmer and Peter Hester. After Reed and Peter gave an overview of the pedagogic aspects of concept mapping, I gave a short slideshow of screenshots of two fantastic Open Source tools: FreeMind, a straightforward mind mapping tool, and OpenOffice.org’s Draw which does a very nice job of diagramming, flow charts, mind maps, and more.

I will link to the slideshow when I upload it.

Bike Ride with Free Thought Association

This is a recording where I decided to wear my iRiver and a lapel mic while on one of my nightly bike rides. It turned into a sort of free-thought monologue where I talk about [Dr.] Joe Torre at the Rider University Commencement, night riding, my neighborhood, Jack, and a whole lot more. Fun, wacky stuff.

Faculty Development Day Technology Fair 2006 Archives and Links

Hello, FDD Technology Fair Attendees

Here are the links I promised to you which archive the session I gave on January 19th.

After this paragraph is a link to the S5 Slideshow I gave on the 19th. Remember, it looks like a Powerpoint, but is built in XHTML and CSS, which means you can view it in a regular old browser like Netscape, Internet Explorer, or Firefox just by clicking the link. To move forward in the slideshow, you can use the arrows on your keyboard, click on the page, or use the navigation tools that appear when you ‘mouseover’ the lower right hand side of the presentation.

http://ghost.rider.edu/cii/presen/techfair/index.htm

Following this paragraph is a link to the mp3 [audio] from the presentation on the 19th - when you click this it should open up in your favorite mp3 player, like QuickTime or Windows Media Player. It may just download to your desktop where you can click on it to open it up. If you need help, or if you’re having trouble, give me a call at x7145. You could open the audio and the S5 presentation at the same time and it would be like being there again, but with a pause button!

http://orion.rider.edu/podcasts/technology_fair_2006_35812104.mp3

Following this paragraph is the mindmap that helped me to work out the various ideas for my presentation. It may take a minute or two to open up, so be patient. If you have trouble with this, give me a call at x7145. Click on the various topics to open and close the branches.

http://ghost.rider.edu/cii/presen/mindmap/index.htm

Probably the most popular response in regards to my presentation has been the reaction to Firefox. You can go get Firefox right now by visiting http://www.mozilla.com

Here is the information on CII Sessions for 2006: http://ghost.rider.edu/cii/sessions
I know from your feedback that you are interested in Mind Mapping Software in future sessions, but I would love to know what else you’d like to spend time talking about.

Here is the link to all presentations in the CII catalog: http://ghost.rider.edu/cii/presen

You should know, I’m blogging this at http://ghost.rider.edu/insttech so that others may benefit from these archives. Feel free to visit it, or if you’ve started to use RSS in Firefox, visit the blog, and then subscribe to the live bookmark. It’s just a click away.

Hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as I did.

John LeMasney

ZillionBits » What is keyword researching?

Since I have been doing my own research of how people value content and ‘vote’ for links of their own high value rank on http://del.icio.us , I have found sites I never would have been exposed to otherwise. social_bookmarking++

Paying close attention to /popular on http://del.icio.us has been an enlightening experience to say the least.

At any rate, this is one of the links I found by regularly scanning /popular, and it’s sort of related to my recent research activity. It involves the idea of learning how people search via keywords and finding out more about how to search more effectively as a result. Good stuff.

ZillionBits » What is keyword researching?

Keyword Research describes the practise of looking at what users are searching for and how they search for it on the Internet, Keyword Research helps us understand the types of things people are trying to find, as well as the words they’re using.

There are a two common methods that Keyword Research tools use to give an indicator of competition

The first one is called the R/S ratio, which shows the ratio of searches to web pages containing that keyword or keyword phrase. R/S ratio is how many times something is searched for against how many pages are found in the search engine with that keyword or phrase included in the page.

The second common indicator is KEI, which stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index. This is very similar to R/S, however, it’s weighted so the higher the keyword volume, the more tolerance it has to lots of competing pages. Keywords or phrases with lots of searches will have a higher KEI compared with ones that have fewer searches, even though their R/S ratio may be exactly the same.

A proponent of MindMapping: Dave Pollard

In a blog entry on Dave Pollard’s How to Save the World Blog, he talks about the benefits of using MindMapping tools for many useful teaching and learning activities. From his site:

How to Save the World: “In addition to building and documenting consensus, this tool is useful for some other things:

* Taking notes from oral presentations, conversations or broadcasts, and written reports and books
* Brainstorming and analytical problem-solving and decision-making
* Individual and team learning
* Project management
* Organization of material prior to publishing or presentation
* Creating a story (’story-boarding’)

What intrigues me about this list of applications is that some of them are left-brain, deductive processes while others are right-brain, inductive, creative processes.”