New Copyright-- with sound! and wordles!

Copyright version 3 k binns

View more presentations from KateBinns.

Chapters 7-9

I read chapters seven through nine of Dr. Lynell Burmark’s book They Snooze, You Lose this week. My assignment was to take information from these chapters and adjust my Copyright powerpoint to improve it. I found this task especially difficult.

Chapter 7 emphasized the importance of having images in your presentations. I agree that images are more captivating than words, but how do you add them to a somewhat stiff topic like copyright? In the previous week I added some graphics, so I chose to leave the images as they were.

Chapter 8 focused on the power of music. I’m not sure how I feel about music being played during a professional presentation. According to Burmark, music can create and or amplify emotion (Burmark, 144). With that statement in mind, I chose to amplify the sense of calm with some soothing, but unobtrusive music. The music I chose was royalty free and provided by Incompetech.

Chapter 9’s topic was on incorporating emotion into your presentation. When I think about copyright laws and issues I only can think of anxiety. As you may recall, I chose the green background color over blue in an effort to calm the viewer. Burmark used a powerful example of Lewis Hine’s photography of children working during the Industrial Revolution. This example resonated with me loud and clear. It took me straight to seventh grade when I first encountered this images in a social studies class. That encounter was made even more powerful by our field trip to Lowell Massachusetts to the very factories that these children worked at. Pictures are powerful! However, how do you add that emotion to a professional presentation? So, I chose to add another slide to my presentation that asks viewers to tap into the emotions of anxiety and then throw them away. I also used a Wordle to demonstrate some of the emotional words associated with copyright laws. Perhaps by acknowledging the anxiety I can then increase the comfort of their new found knowledge?

New and Improved Copyright Presentation

I utilized many of the principals listed in They Snooze, You Lose to improve my copyright presentation. Check it out!

Copyrighted material and the educational setting k binns version 2

View more presentations from KateBinns.

After reading Chapters 1 and 4 of They Snooze, You Lose by Lynell Burmark, I reviewed my copyright presentation. This is the thought process I engaged in as I edited.

Design Element	Reasoning
1. Creativity	My slides were boring! I did not use any images to support the content or break up the words. · I added graphic images of numbers to all slides that were related to the four factors of fair use. · Images were added to several pages to break up the text.
2. Number of words	I was very verbose in my original presentation. I reduced many of the slide words and moved them to my notes section and a reminder of what to share with my audience.
3. Formatting	I chose to adjust the formatting for consistency. All headings were put in bold. The position of text boxes was standardized.
4. Hook—Connections	My first slide attempted to hook my audience by eliciting a personal story. I chose to decrease the number of words on this slide because in a presentation we would simply discuss their response.
5. Font	Initially, I was planning to change my font to one of the four suggested by Dr. Burmark (Verdana, Georgia, Times New Roman, or Arial). However, after reviewing my slides, I felt that my font choice of Century Gothic was appropriate and readable. The kern size did not allow letters to run into each other and it’s a clean, simple font.
6. Color	Dr. Burmark suggested using a blue background with a yellow font/foreground. I tested a few sample color schemes and created my own using this principal. I was not able to find something to my satisfaction. I ultimately chose to stay with my green/orange accent color scheme. Green is a calming color and copyright can be a stressful topic for anyone using images and content from the internet.

Making Some Noise! Chapter 4

After tweaking the visuals of a presentation, it's time to start thinking about how you will present it. Some presentations that are visually attractive are destroyed by a monotone voice and lackluster speaking skills.

According to Dr. Burmark presentations that are efficient in education must do two things:

1. Grab students' attention quickly.
2. Be memorable.

She shared a story about walking on stage wearing a bright pink wig and pink boa. Her audience was immediately entranced and waiting for more. (Burmark, 62-63) As I read about this, I immediately reflected on the past week in my classroom. It was a testing week, which requires students to take a test in each subject daily and also display content mastery through a performance assessment. As a science teacher, my performance assessments tend to be fun. Students were required to display mastery of measuring physical properties. The simplest way to do this would have been to provide students with objects to measure and the tools to do it. I chose to make our day into a treasure hunt. This was augmented with a giant, blow-up pirate hat and a journey to a deserted island (aka the empty classroom down the hall). Students were called scallywags and warned that if they weren't on task they'd have to walk the plank, also known as lunch detention. My students really enjoyed it and were more serious about their treasure hunt measurements. The following day a student asked me if it was going to be a ninja day or zombie day. The way that a task is presented will effect how it is completed!

Effective presentations use one or more of the following hooks:

1. Connections-- Could you relate to the information?
   
2. Humor--Did it make you laugh? My students laughed uncontrollable at my ridiculous pirate hat.
3. Images--What do you expect when you see the images? Does it surprise you?
4. Music-- Humans are hardwired for sound.
   
5. Emotion-- Does it illicit emotional response? Are you angry, sad, happy?
6. Story-- Are you hooked into the story and invested in the outcome?

These elements, referred to as CHIMES, can make or break a presentation. The presentation must be related to your content and must illicit a response from your audience. The use of one or more CHIMES strategies can help you create that response.


Works Cited:

Burmark, L. (2011). They snooze, you lose. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Snoozing and Losing, Chapter 1

Do you remember when you were first introduced to the concept of a PowerPoint? It revolutionized my college classes! You no longer had to listen and take notes, you could simply read the screen. The other option would be to listen to the professor as he or she read off of the screen.

All joking aside, PowerPoint presentations have provided a great tool for excellent presenters. There's a reason that "thirty million PowerPoints are given around the world every day" (Burmark, 4). They allow presenters to show images of the content and prevents leaving out key concepts. I have been held in rapt attention by an amazing presenter aided by his PowerPoint presentation. However, for every one fantastic presenter I've seen five tortuous presentations. This is why I'm so excited to discuss Dr. Lynell Burmark's book They Snooze, You Loose: An Educator's Guide to Successful Presentations. This book breaks down the principals of an excellent PowerPoint presentation and provides simple strategies to improve your PowerPoint.

In Chapter 1- Tweaking presentations, Dr. Burmark provides some simple tips on how to improve already existing presentations. Her message was not to throw away all of the work that you've put into a presentation, but to target the areas that need the most improvement. Some key points were:

1. Allow yourself to be creative. Use the page to truly showcase your content.
2. Make sure your background is just background. It shouldn't be the highlight of your presentation.
3. Visuals used to attract the eye need to start on the left in countries that read left to right.
   
4. Clump important information.
5. Color is key! Colors attract attention and evoke emotion.
6. Font is key! The font needs to match the genre of presentation and be easy to read from a distance.
7. Avoid being verbose. A slide needs to be effective in three seconds.

Creating the perfect background for your slides is difficult. As a presenter, you want to grab your audience's attention, but you also need to focus on the message of your presentation. As the author states, it would be ridiculous to use a tropical background for a presentation on arctic winters. I have been guilty of choosing loud, over-stated backgrounds simply because I found them appealing.

I found the sections regarding font and color most helpful. People intuitively know what colors attract them, but one person's calming sea green is my grandma's old, awful kitchen from the seventies. Understanding color and how it effects people is one of the most key components of a presentation. The safest color scheme in a presentation is a blue background with yellow foreground/text. Yellow is the most eye catching of all colors. This color combination will not exclude people with red-green color blindness. Green, like this blog, is known to inspire calm feelings and thoughts of nature. (Burmark, 8-10) Green may be a great color scheme when delivering negative news to a large crowd!

I often assign presentations to my students. For the past two years, I have struggled to read entire text blocks in the Chiller font, the Blackadder font, and the Mistral font. I understand the attraction to these fonts, and I've even used them for headings. It is impossible to read more than a few words written in these fonts. Dr. Burmark recommended the following fonts for presentations: Georgia, Times New Roman, Verdana, or Arial.

Perhaps the most difficult principal to follow is the word limitation. It's difficult to reduce thoughts to just the most salient points. I am guilty of this crime. In several presentations, I have blocks of just text. It seems important to use my entire vocabulary, but it could be reduced to just a few key words. A slide should provide its key elements in three seconds--- much like a billboard advertisement. (Burmark, 14).

Almost every industry uses PowerPoints to convey information to an audience. In education, the information being share is most often key topics for content mastery. If educators fail to create stimulating presentations, students will ultimately fail in content mastery. I will be utilizing many of these principals to ensure that my students are not "snoozing" and therefore I'm not "losing."

Works Cited:
Burmark, L. (2011). They snooze, you lose. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Copyright for Educators

Copyrighted material and the educational setting k binns

View more presentations from KateBinns

Whoa Now!

I think this is finally a blog that I will be able to keep up with--- only because it's part of an assignment. I am currently taking courses through the Donna RIGHT program and will have my certificate of master technology when completed.

We started the class off by looking at copyright and all that it implies. One of the biggest things that I took away from this was : Everything is copyrighted the moment that it's written, even if it doesn't have that (c) or disclaimer. This is really significant for teachers to realize because we are constantly searching the internet to show our students images and quotations from all around the world. It's an amazing resource to help our students see events and parts of the world they would not otherwise have access to. It's okay to use these images, but just copying and pasting is no longer okay! You need to credit your sources.

It's also great news for any blogger or casual uploader to the internet. Your work is protected inherently! You don't need to jump through any hoops to protect it.

The second important thing that I learned while doing this project was the idea of public domain. If you are a creator of anything you can release into the public domain, which means you no longer have control of what happens to that creation. There are a ton of resources that will allow you to access the public domain.

This was definitely a great introduction to the responsible use of technology and its applications in the classroom.

Definitely take some time to check out my powerpoint (found above) for more information and some helpful links for educators and others interested in using resources from the internet.