How to make videos using Keynote

I have blogged before about converting slide presentations to movies. My previous post is here but deals more with PowerPoint. I am just in the process of assessing the presentations my year 9s have made using slides which they have converted to a movie. Most used Powerpoint and I spent 15 minutes showing them how to do that. I then spent 15 minutes in another lesson looking at iMovie. When it came to Keynote it was a couple of minutes. You export it to Quicktime and save it to the desktop and the transitions and animations are done in the inspector on the far right of the toolbar. The video I have included with this post shows you how effective it can be to make a Keynote movie and also puts out a good message about not pirating! There is plenty of public domain and free material you can use and then it comes down to  imagination. With my year 9s I got them to use their own photos and then enhance that with free images. They thoroughly enjoyed it and the work has been very impressive. They are presenting their creations via their laptops on the whiteboard.

Prepare that speech

Preparing a speech is so much easier with technology. Six Minutes has some really good speech preparation outlines and tips. Inc. has 8 steps to making a great speech and all of the steps are worth following , well explained and justified. If it’s a long speech you may need a timer. I like one to run on top of anything I am doing because most speeches I give are supported by slides and videos. Windows 8 has a wide choice of speech timers. I chose 3 – Strawberry Timer with in built to do list, Moss Timer and Speech Timer. They all take up the full screen and so you cannot run slides. They are very handy for practising the speech or sections of it to see how long it lasts. My favourite timer is Windows Desktop timer. It is neat, simple and sits on top of any screen. There is also a very handy timer for Mac, Apimac, which includes other functionalities and offers a pro version with extra options. I just use the basic version and even that is very helpful. It’s not as neat as the Desktop Timer, though! Depends what you want in a timer, I guess. I know PowerPoint has a built in speech view but I find that a bit disconcerting since there are two slides on the screen and the timer. It messes with my head when I am giving a speech and it means the slides are smaller than if you have a single slide at a time. It’s the timer which is critical . What comes next should be a given since you have been through all this wonderful speech preparation! Again, it’s probably a matter of what suits you as a speaker . I need to see one slide clearly and the time.

Clever animation for Powerpoint 2007

This is quite a clever trick if you have Powerpoint 2007. Wish I hadn’t upgraded to 2010 so I could try it. You can’t do this is Powerpoint 2010, although it offers a lot of nice animation effects and transitions. You should never overdo the animations – not unless you are making one of those really classy and clever one slide Powerpoint animations. Choosing a good transition or two and maybe animating one or two things is probably enough. This animation effect in 2007 is clever, though, and I ended up really liking the music which went with it. 4enjoying has done a good job of sharing knowledge on the Net and has even thought to include the written instructions with the upload so people can follow. You Tube is full of helpful videos and if you are looking to learn something on a computer. It was the reason I was there. I was looking for some quality animation tutorials. Powerpoint is more than bullet points and even though the bullet points can be appropriate at times , it is worthwhile learning how to create other effects with Powerpoint to get the power out of it.

Brilliant presentation tips

I have to thank @alianani15 for putting up the link to this wonderful presentation on Twitter. Online communities work! This didactic slide presentation is a classy piece of work indeed and gives you all the tips for making a first class presentation. More than that it literally shows you how to do it. The future of information sharing looks bright.

Convert Slide presentation to movie

On a Macbook , Powerpoint gives you the option of saving the slide presentation as a movie. It can then be further enhanced in a video programme if you wish and form a part of a teaching movie. Moving components and information seem to be absorbed better than static information and the visual aspect helps to improve absorption and retention. You can add your special effects, and then music. It increases your options. Students can also use it as a way of presenting their work and they do like doing it this way.

Before you save it as a movie make sure you work out your timings. Slide effects and information need to be displayed for long enough for an audience to be able to take in the information . You remove the mouse click check and add your timings. The more you do , the better you will get. In Windows you got to save as and then use the file type drop down menu to select windows media file. In Keynote, the Apple equivalent of Powerpoint , there is also an option to save the presentation as a movie. You use the export option and then you can import it into iMovie.

Merge slides into Powerpoint presentations

Sometimes you want to add slides from a Powerpoint presentation into your new one. Slide presentations need to be changed, updated, reformatted and just used for other purposes. Slide presentations are a bank of resources to be utilised. To add slides form one presentation to the other is the same on Windows and Mac but Windows will bring the slides to be selected up on the right. The images I am using are for the Mac because that is what we use at school.
1. Open the presentation
2. Click on New Slide top left in toolbar.
3. Select insert slides from other presentation.

4. Browse and choose the presentation you want to use. Click to open
5. Select slide(s) you want to insert
6. Click insert and continue with steps 4-6 until you have selected all the slides you wish.

Don’t forget to save it as your new presentation!

Making a timeline

I want my year 9s to make a time line in French for their daily routine . I have been looking around at what is available because this will be the first exercise they do on their new laptops. There are some great timeline sites but they all seem to rely on joining up and sharing the timeline. We seem to share everything these days and we seem to have to sign up to every site we want to use. Well, not every site. Just seems like that. Dipity was my favourite. It is very visual and you could get some real power out of timeline creation in a classroom. Our timelines is an efficient text based timeline maker but requires entering years and would suit other activities but not this one. teAchnology had a simple fuss free timeline generator which I have featured left. It could only take 8 items and couldn’t reproduce the French accents. Pity. That was the most useful generator for my purposes. I did also download the Timeline Maker for Office 2007+. It’s free and took 5 minutes to install. This is a PowerPoint timeline maker and it’s very impressive. It comes with a free welcome PowerPoint tutorial which was perfect. I can use that at home but not at school. At school we have Macbooks and there doesn’t seem to be a Mac version yet. On Windows it will run on Vista and above. For me , timelines take the fatigue out of learning and practising sentence structures. The students can be focussing on creating something interesting as they use their newly learnt – in this case daily routine – language. I’ll get them to map one out in the teAchnology one and then expand it into Powerpoint and we can use the Smart Art. Some might like to use Excel.

DIY holiday and Christmas templates

If you are feeling in the mood or you want your class to produce something for the upcoming festive season Microsoft Office has plenty of templates for a number of items. There are cards, newsletters, magnets, labels, gift lists. All sorts of things so that you can personalise your festive season. There are also calendar templates. I remember my daughter made personal calendars for all the family members on her computer one year when she was at school. She really enjoyed doing it because she loved doing artistic things and it meant she could give something unique and special along with purchased gifts. So , get in touch with your inner artist and personalise your festivities!

Create an online learning adventure

Group presentations are fun!

I posted a few days ago about Group presentations are fun with a link to a slide presentation which is spontaneously being developed on line. We started before Christmas and now the presentation has 94 slides and what a learning journey. If you are talking about effective teaching and learning and if you are committed to the South Australian Teaching for Effective Learning guidelines then this is a good example of how to approach a topic or assignment. The slide presentation and approach creates the scaffolding for learners to commit themselves to the topic in a way that suits them. We were asked to contribute one slide but more often than not people have contributed more than one slide and that has in turn created some good on site discussion and analysis of what has been contributed and then some interesting follow up to what has been published. Ali, as the co ordinator of this online learning experience, has used his social and academic skills, network and capacity to organise a project to ensure that it never stands still. It is obvious he has a vision but he is no way set in his views or path. He is open to the ideas and changes coming through. So many ideas and thoughts have now been contributed in such a short time. We know that sharing knowledge is empowering and consolidates learning , we have been given an opportunity to appreciate the input of others and then the knowledge gaps become clear and we fill them. It is now a slide presentation which has drawn on so many curriculum areas to sustain itself and grow and so now it is an excellent example of online cross curriculum learning. We still do not know how this will end up but the depth and amount of knowledge we have generated is amazing. As it has gone along we have had to sharpen our critical thinking skills. Now I have had an opportunity to participate in this I can see how it would be of great classroom value in some areas of the curriculum and the best thing is that it has been a voyage of discovery.

Group presentations are fun!

Organize and analyze

View more presentations from Ali Anani

Co-authoring a group presentation is turning out to be fun. When you have an online group you can use its combined skills, talents, knowledge base and networking capacity. One person set the parameters and then invited us to contribute. We have over 50 slides now and can contribute when and where we wish as thoughts and ideas occur to us. There has also been some good discussion on the thread beneath the presentation. It is a work in progress but it has generated ideas, enthusiasm and then some really interesting contributions. I have never done anything like this before so I am finding it a good experience and can see it could well be a valuable tool in a classroom situation to enable students to work collaboratively on assignments but allowing for the fact that, as a teacher, I would need to know who has contributed what. It could apply to all sorts of educational purposes because even teachers could collaborate on presentations to do with curriculum, a school or site focus, behaviour management strategies. It actually is a disciplined discussion which creates good content. On the internet content is king!