I posted recently about how I was reworking a presentation using Garr Reynold’s principles and SlideRocket’s cool effects. That presentation was Saturday but the presentation didn’t make it to the audience. I had to rely on my previous PowerPoint – nowhere near the quality of what is embedded here (IMHO).
The presentation was completed but I couldn’t cache it. I sat up until after 1.00am trying and eventually sought the help of the network. I put out a tweet asking if anyone knew anyone from SlideRocket who could give me advice. Angela Maiers replied and said that SlideRocket had an account on Twitter and that I should direct message them. I found them on Twitter and did just that. Had to get some sleep so got up at 6.30 and checked Twitter. Sure enough, direct message from SlideRocket telling me that I needed to download the latest version of their offline client. Did that but still had trouble caching. DM’d again and let them know. When I returned home from the presentation there was a DM from SlideRocket saying they have reported the bug and will be trying to remedy it.
I’m letting you know what happened because I think it’s a fantastic example of how great the network is. I’m in Melbourne, Australia, Angela Maiers is in Des Moines, Iowa and SlideRocket’s offices are in San Francisco. I find it really cool to be able to send out a call for help and halfway around the world my tiny voice is heard and answered within a few hours. I explained all this to my audience this morning and I think a lot of them were pretty impressed, or maybe they were wondering just what it was I was taking about!
Despite my problems I’m still loving SlideRocket and don’t begrudge the time I spent putting the presentation together. Someone, somewhere might want me to do it again (!) and I learnt more about the app as I was using it. As always, you always learn best when you have a need to learn – good lesson for us all as educators to remember. The presentation is visual – very little text so probably a bit hard to follow if you’re not listening to me speak about the process I went through in learning about and initiating digital stories to complement our literature circle studies. The videos students produced are embedded in the presentation and take a while to load- if you want to see them (and they’re there warts and all!) you will have to be patient. Just a note- there is one there that was a response to the essential question, ‘What does it mean to be human?’ There are quite a few images of 9/11 – if you haven’t seen the footage for some time the images can be quite confronting. Interestingly enough, these students were in Grade 4 when 9/11 happened. It obviously had quite an impact on their lives.
**thanks very much to Nat and the staff from SlideRocket – I had trouble getting the presentation to play here and they have been in constant contact helping me to sort things out. Didn’t know such service was possible today – they have been amazing.
Lucacept - intercepting the Web 