Navitar Nibbles at PowerPoint

Now I love a well-made Prezi presentation as much as the next fluffball, but when it comes to practicality, you can’t beat PowerPoint for helping with little classroom tips and tasks. You don’t need a login or internet connection, you can keep it private or upload to Slideshare, and you don’t need to be a creative genius (thank goodness!) to fill those inviting little oblongs with fun stuff! Just make sure you don't OVER-fill them with boring sentences you don't need.

I’ve made a handful of screencasts to accompany some classroom ideas for PowerPoint, which you can find on www.screenr.com/user/Navitar. They’re pretty simple things like inserting speech bubbles to make a handy cut-up you can use for warmers or playing with the timer and animation/reveal function to jazz up a gapfill or revision game (not all my own ideas originally - I 'crowdsourced' them!). You probably know how to do most of them already (well done you!) - maybe help out a fluffy friend if you do!



Sometimes talking face to face is still best :-)

What I found most interesting was that although PowerPoint is meant for presentations, it’s actually really useful for things that are not presentations! After all, English teachers don’t do much presenting but they do use lots of things like visuals and timed activities to keep students interested and get them to practise language in the classroom.
Want to make your own screencasts? I used Screenr.com which is free and you can sign in with a Twitter account or Facebook (you can see my Screenr account at www.screenr.com/user/Navitar). Best thing? You can download the screen recording as an MP4 video when you’re done – which means you can use it anywhere! More on working with audio and video soon I hope…

5 (and a half) resolutions for 2012

In my Christmas blog I had a think about what I want to do better in 2012. I’ve racked my dusty brain cells to whittle everything I want down to 5 resolutions, so here goes!

1. I will try to balance input and output

Sometimes I find myself reading and dreaming, and 3 hours later I’ve done nothing but got screen-ache and 79 websites on my screen! I’m going to keep reading and listening and watching, but also writing and chatting. You know the Joan Didion quote, “I don't know what I think until I write it down”? Well, quite.

2. I will not get sucked in

Not by a vacuum cleaner, or ‘just one more link’, or by the amazing Technicolor all-singing all-dancing techno-thingy that’s going to change my life. Because there isn’t one.  Fact.

Even clones can't do everything!

3. I will do less, and focus more.

I think I’ve said a billion times how overwhelming everything is in my fluffy world. I want to do everything, but it drives me nuts when I try. Do less, do better will be my mantra for this year.

4. Zoom in, zoom out - like a Prezi!

Prezi is something I want to try, and I think some like it because you can focus in on an idea, then pan out and show it’s part of a bigger picture. That’s what I want to do with all my ideas: look at the detail, then work out where it fits into other stuff I know.

5. I will keep my feet on the ground and in the classroom

I haven’t really been in classrooms much ever since I got stuck to a shoe. By watching what teachers and students are doing in classes I can make sure I don’t get carried away in my ivory tower (ok…dusty corner…) – and maybe I’ll get some new ideas too.

Finally, (resolution 5½ cause I kind of made it last year too) I’m going to be as ‘zen’ as I possibly can about this whole thing.  This scene isn’t slowing down anytime soon, but there’s no way I can run and keep up with it – I mean, have you seen my post-xmas fluff after all that pudding??  

When it all gets too much, I’m hitting the ‘off’ button and shuffling out for some fresh air.