3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations

Coming as I do from a background in language teaching that emphasises that the teacher should shut up and get the students to do the talking, I often feel uncomfortable doing conference presentations, many of which still follow the format of; speaker gets up in front of audience with presentation - does presentation - audience listen (try to stay awake) and desperately try to think of a few questions at the end to prove they were awake and listening.

One of the gifted- Jamie Keddie.

There are of course a few gifted speakers who can hold the audience’s attention for a full hour and keep most of them listening and awake. If like me you’re not one of those, then here are a few tools that, thanks to the increasing availability of wireless connectivity at conference centres these days, might help to turn your passive listeners into a bunch of multitasking audience collaborators.

Set up a backchannel
One of my favourite tools to use during presentations is Today’sMeet http://todaysmeet.com/ . It’s a great tool for setting up backchannels. A backchannel is basically what your students create when they talk among themselves or text each other during your lesson.

• The advantage of setting one of these up to allow your audience to do this is that you can capture and share what your audience is saying while they are listening to you and enable them to collaborate and share with each other what they know about the topic and links to any relevant resources.
  
• It can also help them to type in questions as they think of them rather than waiting for you to ask at the end, and for me it’s a great way to pass out URLs to interesting websites to give the audience some hands on participation during the presentation.
• It’s also a good way of getting the audience to brainstorm and do tasks together, just ask a few questions and get them to type in answers, and they’ll appear in the backchannel window for everyone to see.

Setting up a back channel with Today’s Meet takes about 60 seconds. You just type in a name for your channel and launch it. You can select how long you want the channel to be available (from two hours to a year) and if you have people in your audience posting updates to Twitter, you can select a hashtag (#) specific to your talk so that their ‘tweets’ appear alongside the backchannel chat window.

• You can read more about backchannels here ‘Tap into the Backchannel in Your Presentation’

Live polling
Getting audience response during presentations can be done quite easily by getting a show of hands, but I tend to find that pretty unsatisfying in terms of capturing and sharing data, so I’ve started using a polling / survey tool called Urtak http://urtak.com/ during presentations.

• With Urtak you can prepare a number of short online polls to to get your audience to do during the presentation.

• Just send the URL to them using your backchannel and then you can show and capture your audience response live during your session, as Urtak collects and shares results as soon as people vote.
• If you are logged in during your presentation it’s even quick and easy enough to create short polls on the fly and pass out the URL through your backchannel.

Here’s an example one I created for a presentation on digital teaching skills that you can look at: http://urtak.com/u/1826 . Urtak even enables the audience to add questions if they register and log in.

• You can read more about Urtak at ‘Creating Social Polls and Questionnaires Using Urtak’

Make note taking collaborative
Many listeners at presentations do their best to keep notes during presentations, so if your audience has wireless connectivity why not get them to do this collaboratively? A great tool for doing this is Sync.in http://sync.in/ .

• It has a desktop launcher that your simply click to create an online collaborative note taking pad. You then share the URL for each pad with your audience and they can then work in groups to assemble notes and comments on your presentation as you go or work on collaborative tasks that you can set them.
  
• The texts can then be saved by each person at the end of the presentation or they can even continue to refine the notes after the presentation is over. Sync.in also has a handy text chat room which runs alongside each document that’s created, so collaborators can discuss things and ask questions as they work. See Collaborative Text Editing Tool for more information on Sync.in.
  

Of course these tools aren’t just useful for conference presentations, but can be used for online training webinars as well as classroom teaching if you work in a wireless enabled classroom environment. Be sure to practice with them one at a time first for short tasks as you gradually build them in to your presentation skills repertoire.

Good luck and I hope you find these tools useful and soon have your audience multitasking as well as listening.

Related links:

• Let us Now Praise Famous Women
• The Web 2.0 School of the Present
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution: Part 2
• Creating Social Polls and Questionnaires Using Urtak
• Survey Creation Tool for Students
• Create Quick Online Polls
• Create an ESL EFL Video Quiz
• Make your own chat room
• Express Your Opinions

Best

Nik Peachey

Yesterday Was The Day

Don Dollar says (via my facebook wall), "It's time for another blog post."  Don, you know how I hate to disappoint. :)  Conveniently, my Breaking Free bible study wrapped up this past week, and my plan is to ease back into the blogging world slowly and cautiously.  I'm ready to pick up where I left off, but instead of feeling an obligation to blog every (x) amount of days, I'm going to blog whenever and wherever I darn well please.



So yesterday was the day.  The day of the Second Empire 5K Classic in downtown Raleigh, of course.  If you don't remember from several of my previous blog posts, this was a 5K race in the heart of downtown Raleigh held by Second Empire Restaurant & Tavern owner, Kim Reynolds, to benefit Hopeful Parents, a nonprofit organization that assists prospective adoptive parents in preparing to adopt and provides community support to adoptive and birth families.  Kim and her husband, who adopted their son a few years ago, are active members of Hopeful Parents.  When they spotted the Mother's Day story in the News & Observer about my open adoption last May, Kim contacted me about helping to plan the race.  Jumping at the chance to promote adoption, I was so in.



Having the opportunity to be a part of the planning committee was nothing short of a privilege. I had the opportunity to work with so many great people who truly believe in celebrating, supporting and promoting adoption.   There were 500+ runners at the event, adoption agencies on-site to answer questions and provide resources, music, mascots, and spectators.  It was so neat to see how many people came out to support the event and celebrate adoption.  What I like best about Hopeful Parents is that the organization strives to provide continued support for adoptive parents, birthfamilies, and adopted children.  No member of the adoption triad left behind!  Which of course is not their slogan, but I'm thinking that it probably should be.



A particularly memorable moment (for me) was before the race began and one member of each side of the adoption triad (adoptive parent, birthmother, adoptee) addressed the crowd on stage.   First, Lea, a board member of Hopeful Parents who adopted her son a few years ago spoke about her experience as an adoptive mother and about Hopeful Parents.  Next, I hopped (literally) up on stage and spoke for a few minutes about my experience with open adoption and my goal to start a birthmother support group here in the Triangle.  (Here comes the memorable part) --> The adoptee, 10-year-old Allyson, spoke about how grateful she is that she was adopted.  It was precious.  I could see a few teary-eyed folks in the crowd as Allyson read from her hand-written list all of the things she has been able to do because of her adoption -- playing on a soccer team, learning to play the violin, having a little brother that she adores, etc, etc, etc.  She noted the fact that she would never have been able to have these things if she had not been adopted. 



I couldn't help but get a little misty-eyed myself, thinking about Deanna as Allyson spoke.  I hope that Deanna feels similarly about her adoption when she gets older.  I hope that she is able to understand how much she has been able to experience because of her adoption and how much she would have missed out on had she not been placed with Don and De. Things like playing soccer every week, being enrolled in a stellar gymnastics program, living at the beach, having a stay-at-home mom and a stable home life are just a few examples of the things that probably would not have been possible for Deanna if I had tried to do things on my own.   While I don't constantly dwell on Deanna's future adoption inquiries, these tough questions are something that I have tried to mentally prepare myself for.  Allyson's speech gave me hope for Deanna's acceptance someday. 



And then I ran the 5K.  I wasn't planning on running since I was speaking literally RIGHT before the race began, but I decided at the last minute that I would just do. Seriously, I almost died in the 90+ degree weather, but I actually ran the entire race without stopping and came in 5th in my age group.  I'm so glad that I decided to challenge myself.  Unfortunately, today I am dealing with the intense repercussions of 1) not stretching well before the race  2) not warming up before the race and 3) not lathering sunscreen on my shoulders/arms/back/chest. 



I'm beginning to realize more and more as I get older that my parents are always right.  Yeah, I admit it.  "Always wear sunscreen, stretch before you exercise, remember to say please and thank you, etc, etc, etc." And the list goes on.   My parents have drilled these concepts into my head time and time again, and it's sad to think that as a 23-year-old, I've only placed the utmost importance on the "remember to say please and thank you" part.   I'm finally beginning to realize that there is a logical explanation behind all of my parent's rules and advice.  But don't tell them I told you that. :)



Well aside from looking like a lobster and feeling the pain of sunburned skin and sore muscles, I am feeling pretty good about myself today.  Thank you to everyone who came out to the race!  

Check out the pictures from the event:

3D Computer Games with Young Learners: Spore

In a recent digital skills survey I carried out using Urtak I discovered that more than 50% of digitally skilled teachers don't feel able to utilise 2D and 3D computer games to achieve pedagogical goals (See survey), so I've been looking around and exploring some possibilities. The first of these is the Spore Creature Creator. Spore is a game which allows you to create creatures and evolve them along with their environment, all the way through to a space traveling society.

The free trial creature creator that we will be looking at allows you to create creatures, take snap shots of them and make videos of them to see how they move. Here's an example of a video I created to get students interested. I added the captions and text using i-Movie though you could just as easily use a free online video editor such as Video Toolbox or Windows Moviemaker if you are using a PC.



The creatures are very easy to create, you just drag and drop different features onto a body and the add colour and test them out to see how they move. These are some of the other creatures I created.




Once you have created your creatures you can either make videos of them, take snapshots, which you can either save or email to someone, or create an animated gif of your creature (I wasn't too impressed with the quality of the animated gifs)

Here' a tutorial showing you how it's done.



You can download a .mov version of the tutorial here or this pdf document has the main screen shots and instructions if you'd prefer to follow on paper.

You can download the Creature Creator from the Cnet website here. It's a big download (205MB), but once you have it, you don't need to have web access to do any of the tasks or create the movies and snapshots.

How do we use this with students?

• Create images of different creatures and get the students to create a story about them.
• Get the students to create descriptions of different creatures - This could include appearance, but also likes and dislikes, habits etc.
• Get students to match pictures to descriptions.
• Get students to create a creature based around your description.
• Create a creature and use a picture of it as a picture dictation with one student describing the picture while the other one recreates the creature using the software.
• Get students to create a short video of their creature and add a description and narrative below it as a video project.
  
• Ask students to create a creature suitable for a particular environment, or types of tasks, then get students to discuss which they think would be best adapted for the environment.
• Get the students to write instructions for how to create a creature.
• Use the creatures to demonstrate present continuous tenses ( sitting, running etc.)
  

What I like about it.

• It looks great on a data projector and if you work in a single computer classroom, you can get students up and dragging things around and creating in front of the class.
• The creatures are very colourful and in the environment mode they really start to take on character.
• You can use the tool to create versatile and stimulating materials.
• It's free and pretty easy to use once you get it installed.
• I like the integration with YouTube as it makes it very easy to get your videos online quite quickly.
• I like that they can produce a range of gestures and expressions.
  

What I'm not so sure about.

• It's a big download and will need to be installed on any computer it is used on, so if you want to use it in your school computer room, you'll need the help of a supportive IT manager to get it downloaded and installed on all the computers.
• The Gifs it creates aren't that good, but you don't really need to use them.
• You need a fairly good computer with a good graphics card for it to work well.

I hope you enjoy trying some of these ideas with your students.

Related links:

• Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL
• Educational Games That Really Are Fun
• Exploiting two computer-based RPGs
• Games With a Purpose and a Social Network
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Create your own game
• Online Water Conservation Game
• Wonderland Virtual World and MMORPG
• Google's Lively Competitor with Second Life?
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Machinima with
  

Best

Nik Peachey

Creating Social Polls and Questionnaires Using Urtak

I discovered Urtak a couple of weeks ago and took an instant liking to it. Urtak is a web based social polling application that enables you to very quickly and easily create online polls and questionnaires.
The only thing you require to get started is an email address to register as it is completely free. Here’s a short tutorial showing how it’s done.

• Watch or download a higher quality video: Urtak tutorial

The polls it creates are pretty simple. You just type in 'Yes , No' questions or statements and then click enter, give your poll a title and instructions and click on done. It seems like you can have as many questions as you like. The longest one I created had 45. Here are a couple that I created. Feel free to try them out and answer the questions to see how they work. You'll also be able to see the results.

• Teachers' digital skills tick list
• Teaching Kids with Computers
• Politics in the classroom

Once your poll is complete you can either link to it via the URL or embed it into a web page.

Once the poll is live anyone who sees the poll can answer it without having to log in or register. Viewers can even add additional questions or statements to the poll if they do register though.

What I like about it.

• Once users vote they can compare their answers to other people who have used the poll.
• The poll gives a feed out of information on the right and you can even cross tabulate answers to different questions.
• It’s great that other people can add questions to the poll.
• I like that it doesn’t give the ‘correct’ answer but shows most popular answers. This is good to keep students thinking and questioning themselves.
• If you don’t like the questions that people add to your poll you can easily get rid of them.
• You can embed the poll into other web based materials.
  
• It’s free and really quick and easy to use.

How can we use this with students?

• We can use it for class / online surveys and get students to analyse and write up the results.
• We can use it for action research to find out what things we do in class students enjoy or understand or just to get general feedback.
• We can use it to test comprehension by creating question or statements about an online text.
• We can set web research tasks for students by asking questions and getting them to search the web to find answers or find out if statements are true.
• We can use it to create progress tests to evaluate the effectiveness of our teaching.
  
• We can use it to create debate and explore attitudes by giving students the poll before they come in to class to get them thinking around topics to discuss in class. We could also follow this up with a post class poll to see if opinions have changed at all.
• We could use it for needs analysis to see what students feel they need to study in class.
• We can use it to get students to self assess their progress.
• We can get students to create their own reading tasks by getting them to produce questions in a poll based around an online text, then they can answer each other’s questions.(Great to use with Mashpedia)
  
• We can get students to practice Yes No questions forms and create questionnaires to find out more about their class mates.
  

What I’m not so sure about.

• At present any poll you create is added to the Urtak directory, so it would be nice to have private URLs to ensure only your students answered the questions.
• It might also be handy to be able to disable the option to have other people add questions to your polls as you can’t be sure that what they add will be relevant etc.
• If students go to the directory of all polls they might find some unsuitable and potentially offensive ones.

On the whole though I think Urtak is a great free tool and one that I will continue to use. It’ helped me to make designing web based materials a bit more interactive and also enabled me to quickly and easily do research that I can share and use to inform training and workshop presentations.

I hope you find it useful too.

Related links:

• Create Authentic Web Based Research Tasks With Mashpedia
• Survey Creation Tool for Students
• Create Quick Online Polls
• Create an ESL EFL Video Quiz
• Education for the Global Economy

Best

Nik Peachey

A Tick List of 21st Century Digital Skills for Teachers

I've just been brainstorming digital skills that I believe are required by teachers in the 21st Century. So far I've come up with 45 of them.

What's striking for me about this is:

• few of these skills will have been taught to anyone who trained as a teacher longer than 5 years ago.
• few of these skills are being taught to teachers training now.
• the 21st century teacher needs to be a pretty amazingly skilled professional.

Please look through the list and tick on the ones you believe you have.

Teachers Digital Skills Tick List

Teachers' digital skills tick list

I'd also be very interested in any comments about any you think I've missed or that you think don't belong there.

Related links:

• Online Video: What does it have to offer teachers and learners?
• Using wikis for teacher development
• 10 Teacher Development Task for Web 2.0 Tools
• Creating a personal homepage
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution: Part 2
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• 120 + Online Activities for Students

Best

Nik Peachey

Guest Blog Post from Sister Michelle

Written by my lovely sister, Michelle Hutton:



Well, I can’t give myself a better introduction than Amy has done for me.  I do have to correct her on one point, though.  I am not a licensed psychologist, but a licensed psychological associate.  The difference is, of course, that I had neither the money nor the motivation to put myself through another 4 years of a doctorate program before starting to work.  I settled with a master’s degree and a license that allows me to practice psychology in the state of North Carolina.  I mainly work with middle- and high school-age kids from impoverished families.  This is my first time guest-blogging, or "glogging," and I am thrilled to get the opportunity to write for Amy. 



As my background (police officer, peeper-tackler) has no doubt alerted you, I have always been the “tough” sister.  I took care of the problems, whatever they might be.  When other people tried to intimidate my sisters, I jumped to their defense.  I was not shy about my willingness to verbally or physically defend either of them, be it a crazy ex-boyfriend, a jealous classmate, or a new boyfriend coming over to meet the family (sorry, Laura). 



Even when my sisters fought with each other, they both came to me for answers.  I always provided the comfort and support that an older sister ought to, and tried to fix their relationship the best I could.  I enjoyed my role as the problem-solver.  So, naturally, when we found out Amy was pregnant, I made it my job to come up with solutions.  I came up with elaborate plans involving my family that would allow us to keep and raise Deanna in Pittsburgh.  I almost completely discounted the Leonards’ role.  This was Amy’s baby, darn it, and I added the unborn child to the list of people I felt I had to protect. 



Then I found out that Amy was considering adoption.  I felt that I had lost some sort of battle.  I imagined the baby far away, never knowing anyone in her family, and completely without my protection.  I was very angry with Amy and Robbie.  I cried myself to sleep for several nights.  Confused and irrational, I called both of them to vent my feelings.  Robbie tried his best to calm me down, but the only thing he said that made any difference to me was something to the effect of, “Amy feels like everyone hates her right now, she really needs support from you.” 



That simple statement woke me up to the hurt I was inflicting upon my sister, whom I loved and protected.  I made the decision then that I would support Amy.  This did not mean I was happy with her decision.  I still couldn’t understand how she would want to give away part of herself to a family of strangers.  It was difficult for me to put myself in Amy’s position and see why she made the choice that she did.  Trying to find someone besides my sister to blame for this decision, I focused on the Dollars.  I decided that I wouldn’t like De or Don, the two people who would willingly take Amy’s child away from her. 



Suffice it to say that, when I finally met De and Don, I was distant, reserved, and extremely suspicious of these people who were now my niece’s protectors and caretakers.  Luckily for me, they did not take this the wrong way, and soon enough I willingly passed the role of the protector off to Don, who will someday also want to strike fear into the hearts of young men who come to meet the family.  It took one meeting for me to change my opinion of De and Don.  From that point, I saw the Dollars as my sister did from the very beginning:  a loving couple who wanted a child.  Amy had told me over and over (before I was ready to listen to her) that she felt that she and the baby were the answer the Dollars had been praying for.  After I met them, I believed that Amy was right. 



The lesson that I learned from this is that I had to trust Amy to make the right decision for her and Deanna, regardless of what my personal opinion was.  We could all tell Amy what we thought she should do, what we thought was best for her and the baby, but really Amy was the only one who could know what would be best for her.  My sister made the perfect decision.  She was able to meet her own needs as well as Deanna’s needs.  Amy was able to go to college, join the swim team, conduct ridiculous interviews with unsuspecting people, and graduate.  Deanna is able to enjoy an extra-large loving, supportive family.  They are able to see each other and have time together. 



I know that if anyone could have given me a picture of this future when Amy was pregnant, I would not have had nearly as much trouble accepting Amy’s decision as I did when the future was so uncertain.  I love the new additions to my extended family, and respect my sister’s personal strength more than ever.  And De and Don know that if they have any problems, they have a former-police-officer-and-peeper-tackler waiting in the wings to help. 



-Michelle

Updates on Amstel's Life

My older sister, Michelle, is going to be writing a guest blog post for Amstel Life.  On a personal level, she's closely observed what it's been like for me to go through the entire adoption process.  On a professional level, she's a licensed psychologist in the wonderful state of North Carolina, so I think her perspective will be an interesting one.  Yes, this is the sister who used to be a seasonal police officer, who owns pet rats because she truly enjoys their company, and who tackled a peeping tom outside of my aunt's window and put him in a headlock until the police and paramedics arrived.  THAT sister.  She refuses to reveal to me the topic of her post and the date it will be completed.  Heck, she probably hasn't started yet, but we do our best work under pressure, right?   



Michelle has really changed since high school.  Here she is below:

Just kidding.  Those are her fake cleatus teeth.  

Did you believe me?  Okay, here she really is.  

This picture was taken during her Katherine Heigl stage.

Michelle--we anxiously wait for your post.  



Now for some updates:

Robbie went to visit Don, De, and Deanna a few weeks ago.  He stayed with them overnight and had the wonderful opportunity to take Deanna to school the next day with De.  He got to see her classroom, talk to her teachers, and see what her daily routine is like.  Isn't that cool?  

 

















































De recently had some homework to do for Deanna's class....

Look at what she made:

 

 

 

Isn't De so creative and crafty?  I wish I had that kind of artistic ability.  When I was in 4th grade I tried to make a paper mache replica of my then idol, Dominique Moceanu.  Regretfully, it didn't even resemble a human being, and I think the arms fell off a short time later.  My mom said it was great though!  Hey, I tried, right?  I'm crossing my fingers that Deanna will take after De's creative side...and not mine.



And my final update of the day...

I'm five weeks into a Beth Moore Bible study and it's like nothing I've ever experienced before.  Have you heard of Beth Moore?  If you have, then I need not say anything else.  If you haven't, then you need to.  She is a popular Bible study teacher who is absolutely hilarious and incredibly insightful, and she has great hair that is constantly changing.  She is a firecracker!



Take a look at this picture I found from many years ago of Beth rocking the Carol Brady!  Whew, look at that hair!  If that doesn't motivate you to learn more about her...

The study I'm doing is called, "Breaking Free" ...

In Breaking Free, best-selling author and popular Bible teacher Beth Moore takes you on a journey to discovering true spiritual freedom - the abundant life God intends for every believer - by identifying spiritual strongholds and removing all obstacles that hinder you from enjoying the benefits of a relationship with God. 



What makes this Bible study so special for me?  Well for starters, it's my first one.  And not only that, I admit to you that I had never consistently read the Bible until now.  I had skimmed through it before (here and there) and heard the word during church on Sundays, but I actually never found myself wanting to sit down and read it consistently -- until now.  It might have been Beth Moore's Texas-twanged accent when she said, "Get in The Word, girlfriend!" that motivated me to actually get started, but it was the contents of the book that kept me going back.  I can't believe what I've been missing out on.



I found one of the very first lessons in the study to be especially pertinent to my life.  Beth Moore writes,  

"I believe God's hatred of pride expresses His love. Pride slights Him, but it destroys us.  Uzziah had been a good man. An excellent king. A wonderful provider. A courageous warrior. Even a visionary and an entrepreneur. Yet, when his life was over, all people could say was, "He had leprosy." How like our human natures-both in our tendency towards pride when we are blessed with success and in our tendency to judge someone's entire life by a brief season of failure..."  



A brief season of failure.  This lesson really stood out to me.  Why is it that we tend to remember people for their mistakes rather than for their greatest achievements?  I can sort of relate to that.  I thought that lesson was super interesting, and so many of Beth's other lessons that have just blown me away.  I constantly find myself thinking, "I never thought about it like that!" or  "He did that for me????"  I've learned so much already, and I'm absolutely loving it. The Lord has been so good to me.



For the next couple of weeks, I'm going to continue to devote most of my time to my "homework," identifying the strongholds and obstacles in my life, and breaking free from those strongholds and obstacles.  That's not to say that I'm putting Amstel Life completely on the back burner, but I think this will be an awesome opportunity for me to really grow as a person and to put some things I've dealt with in the past to rest.  And this will also be an awesome opportunity to introduce some guest bloggers who have their own perspectives about open adoption!  Ahem, Michelle.  Anyone have suggestions for guest bloggers for Amstel Life? 



I'm so excited about the next few weeks, and I hope that you'll continue to keep up with Amstel Life!  

There are going to be some awesome changes coming your way soon... :) 

Jesus said to him, "Is it because you have seen me that you have believed? How blessed are those who have never seen me and yet have believed!"

John 20:29