Online Presenting

This week we did some online presenting using PowerPoint. It was fun to have everyone on together. One thing to keep in mind when using this kind of technology is that things can go wrong...and they did. As long as people are prepared for glitches and have some patience all will be fine. I don't have the best signal out in the woods up here, so I will need to go in and review the presentations before I can give feedback.

My husband was off to the side helping me get set up. He used the same technology when he was in Iraq during his last deployment and he said that things can get messed up when presenters accidentally do things without intending to. He also said that interruptions happen frequently during online meetings because if there is any delay in sending/receiving messages, people start talking over each other and things get messy.

I was distracted trying to teach this way and felt like it showed. I knew the material that I was presenting, but I was trying to pay attention to many new things at the same time....I was on overload for a while. Grin. My lesson works better face-to-face. Sign Language is something that is best learned in action.

This week I am working on my Final Portfolio. I wasn't able to access the recordings from our presentations, so I sent Helen some screen shots of the error message I received when trying to use the Moodle link. She is working on it, so I am catching up on the blogging until I can roll up my sleeves and get working on that.

Googleicious

I really enjoyed learning more about Google. I have always appreciated using Google as a search engine and then decided to use use gmail for e-mail. I am really liking the versatility that goes with all of the Google applications and the idea of having documents I can either share or not share online instead of saving them on my computer or flash drive.

Jing

I am messing around with Jing trying to get used to choosing the shots that I want. Does anyone know how to make the documents smaller for the PowerPoint slides. Right now I am taking more screen shots than I need to, so if you have some advice for me that would be great. It's so nice to be able to capture images and fit them into a document. I will be practicing all week. Grin.

Posting a video from You Tube

One of the things I think about in this class is access, especially because I am interpreter who has worked with deaf and hard of hearing people for most of my adult life. You may see me mention this a lot so bear with me; the majority of experience I have with children is either with my own or with deaf and hard of hearing children.

I wanted to post a video right out of the gate, so I picked a video of Marlee Matlin speaking to the FCC about broadband access for deaf and hard of hearing people. It's not the most interesting of messages, but if you want to see her in another capacity, she was on dancing with the stars. Marlee is a deaf actress, so I give her huge Kudos for going on a dance program when she doesn't hear the music. She can feel the vibration of some of it, but that takes guts. Anyway, here is the video of her comments and also one of her dancing.