Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, the company behind Al Gore’s Oscar-winning presentations, has published a presentation book called ‘Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations’.

The book has twelve chapters covering issues such as displaying data, thinking like a designer, and creating movement. Many of the presentations Nancy shows in her book are available for download or can be seen via video on a specially created Slide:ology website for free.

Slide:ology comes highly recommended by presentation guru Garr Reynolds on his blog about issues related to professional presentation design. Garr also covers some of the more salient points in his blog posts.

Metaverse Tour 2008

Gary Hayes has been exploring the various virtual worlds around at the moment and has produced this great seven minute video for posterity. This is proof, with over 50 virtual worlds covered, that there are options beyond Second Life and the hype that surrounds it. It’ll be fascinating to see how the landscape changes two, five or ten years down the line.

Michael Wesch on Web 2.0

Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology exploring the impacts of new media on human interaction at Kansas State University, is well known for innovative teaching techniques such as the World Simulation Project and short videos such as A Vision of Students Today and The Machine is Us/ing Us. The Machine is Us/ing Us has now been viewed over 6.2 million times on YouTube.

Michael’s recent presentation for the Univeristy if Minitoba, and his inspiring keynote at the BbWorld08, are now available online. An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube is also available.

Institutional Ning Social Networks

I, like Tony Hurst from OUseful, was surprised to find that both the University of Bradford and the University of Wales Newport had created social networks for new students using Ning.

It will be interesting to see whether Newspace from Newport and Develop Me! from Bradford will flourish or, as AJ Cann predicts in a comment on the OUseful blog, become social networking ghettos. Michael Webb, Head of IT and Media Services at Newport, tells us that early feedback is positive as least:

“So how’s it going? So far, really, really well – in a lot of ways it’s turning out to be one of the most exciting projects I’ve been involved in. Feedback on the site is terrific, so far we’ve over 300 members (we’re only a small institution, and have only invited two schools so far), and the quality and quantity of the communication is amazing! It’s really working – students are using the site to make friends, share their excitement, create their own home pages, reassure one another and ask questions.”

And would it really matter if initial student enthusiasm for these sites does fade? Claire Gibbons, Web Manager for the University of Bradford, made the point at the Institutional Web Management Workshop that even if interest in Develop Me! fades, or users migrate to Facebook or MySpace, before Christmas it will have achieved its purpose of supporting students during that difficult transition from school to university. Moreover, as Brian Kelly points out, Bradford and Newport will have had the opportunity to gather evidence on the use of social networks in higher education at little or no cost to the institution as well.

Institutional Twitter Accounts

Brian Kelly, through his UK Web Focus blog, has discovered several UK HE institutions with institutional Twitter accounts. It will be fascinating to see how universities such as Keele, Cardiff, Aston, Edge Hill, Birmingham, and the OU choose to use these accounts and the number of people who are interested in following them.

Will institutions decide to re-purpose news and information published elsewhere or will they be more interested in actively engaging with other Twitter users?

Web 2.0: Managing the Risks

Another interesting presentation at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2008 came from Chris Adie from the University of Edinburgh. Chris is the Academic Liaison Director for the College of Science and Engineering and the Information Services group and recently led the development of guidelines for the use of external Web 2.0 services. In his presentation, Chris looks at some of the risks which institutions need to take into account when considering Web 2.0 services.

The guidelines and the presentation are both available online.

Disruptive Technologies or New Pedagogical Possibilities?

Gráinne Conole’s presentation, “Disruptive Technologies or New Pedagogical Possibilities“, from the recent Eduserv Foundation Symposium is now available on Blip.tv. Gráinne is Professor of E-Learning in the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University and presented on the tensions between Web 2.0 technologies and education.

Gráinne’s blog, “e4innovation“, about E-Learning innovation can also be found on WordPress.

Metatrends: The Horizon Project at Five Years

I was fortunate enough to catch Laurence Johnson’s presentation at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2008 a couple of weeks ago.

Laurence is Chief Executive Officer of the New Media Consortium (NMC), an international consortium of more than 200 world-class universities, colleges, museums, research centres, and technology companies dedicated to using new technology to inspire, energize and support learning. The NMC produces, as part of its Emerging Technologies Initiative, an annual Horizon Report which charts the landscape of emerging technologies.

Laurence’s presentation explored emerging patterns from five years of Horizon Reports and it’s now available online. The 2008 Horizon Report is also available in HTML and PDF format.

Balloon Buster

We’ve moved onto creating games on the “Digital Worlds – Interactive Media and Game Design” course now. You can download Balloon Buster (one of the games created with GameMaker from YoYo Games) using the ‘My Files’ widget on this blog. I went, as you can tell, for a dark and brooding look-and-feel.

Louise Heatley has also created a “Catch the Bat“game as part of the course.

Digital Worlds – Interactive Media and Game Design Course

Tony Hurst from the Open University has started to blog a course called “Digital Worlds – Interactive Media and Game Design“.

This experimental course aims to give a greater understanding of how interactive media and computer games work and intends to cover technical basics, the development process, and marketing and distribution dimensions amongst other things.

I’m hooked – writing computer games (with an educational slant these days) is an interest of mine anyway, the idea of blogging a ten week course is fascinating in itself, and Tony has even managed to weave The Cult into his teaching materials. Pure genius.