This week our focus was on design. Zen provided great guidelines to use when organizing your presentation, in order to make your message clear and easy to understand; design keeps the end-user/audience in mind throughout the entire process.
It was exciting and very useful to take an existing powerpoint presentation I had and use the design principles to revamp and improve the presentation: 1) reduce noise, 2) picture superiority effect, 3) empty space, 4) contrast, 5) repitition, 6) alignment and 7) proximity. All of these principles make perfect sense; however, implementing them was not always as easy as I thought it would be. Space for example was difficult for me. I am the one that likes to use every available spot on the slide, with a goal of fitting everything on one page if I could! I had to take a step back, think about what my message was and how best to convey it to the audience, remembering that if my slides have absolutely everything printed on them, then why am I there?
Animoto.....love it! I can see how this would be easy, fun and educational to use in the classroom. What a powerful tool for students and teachers. I've got several project ideas swirling in my head.....biography, autobiography, history projects, book reviews or trailers, etc... I created a video of my daughter's 8th grade graduation, using a song in Animoto's library and it was just perfect, the combination of song, text and images! I can't wait to share it with my family.
As always, the wealth of ideas and feedback from the class and professor is great. The various websites we've used in class, gotten from the textbooks and have shared in the forums will help me build a list of resources that I can use in the future.
Lastly, I continue to have fun with the picture-a-day assignment. It's fun to see what creative images my classmates have taken.
I agree that we are getting a lot of great resources out of this class. Presentationzen has really made me stop and not only think about how to revamp my presentations, but also how I may want to revamp my life. I like the idea of "simplicity" in all areas of life. Everything just seems easier that way. Creating a zen presentation is tricky because you really have to consider your audience to determine the level of "zenness" that is appropriate. I love your idea of using Animoto for your daughter's graduation photos. I may copy your idea:) I plan to use Animoto for an "All About Me" project for my class so we can get to know each other in a multimedia format. Was there anything this week that presented a challenge for you? How did you work through it? How will you use what you are learning in your work?
ReplyDeleteI agree, Animoto is very fun and almost addicting once you get going. The trick is telling the story with a sense of purpose.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you listed all of the characteristics that you applied in your power point presentation. Were you able to achieve all of them? For myself, I was only able to pick a few (baby steps). I felt frustrated and overwhelmed if I applied all of them. Especially since I really didn't care about the topic I was re-creating. I can't wait to see yours!
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