Hating life and PowerPoint right now

PowerPoint fragged up on me three times today with my macbook making the most incredibly weird noises.  Having to employ the hard shutdown always makes me nervous.  I had to redo a few areas of our group presentation many times because it refused to SAVE! Even when it did the backup every few minutes, it still didn't have the changes.   Since my entire weekend has become this project, I could have done without this nonsense.  I still couldn't embed video, like I can do on  non- mac machines. I just couldn't find the feature on the PowerPoint for mac. I wanted to upload the whole thing to Issuu as a flipbook, but it wouldn't take the formatting.  I had to go to Plan B for the Web 2.0 component.

I used slideshare instead.  I did not yet use the narration feature, because we have to narrate as a team.  I look forward to doing that on my own when we are done.  It would be too hard to do it with three of us in different places.  Slideshare has been a resource for my blog when I want to post a bunch of pictures from an event. As a presentation solution, I was thrilled with some of the free options it offered.  It has some great features and I wish I could change my tooltime to that tool.

Can you read our Webspiration?

The most illuminating thing that happened this weekend was having to work as a team.  Giving up control of even part a project has to be  the most challenging feeling ever, and one we have to remember stresses OUR students out as well.  I had to understand and implement what Brian's main ideas were from our  mindmapping in Webspiration.  I hope I stayed true to his ideas, if not, it is tooooooooo late.  I started working on what we had, then he added more and I had to match it all up again to make sure I didn't miss anything.  Note to self: Don't even start until it is all done. I have no idea if Roma finished our  Timeline activity Gant chart, our meeting this evening did not come about due to scheduling issues.  So now I have to rely on the email for communication until we can all talk again in Wimba.   Wimba as a crutch?  I am officially spoiled and hate having to go email everyone as they are not on Skype right now.

I chose the peace sign because what is contained in the this Tagxedo
just a "piece" of the whole IT picture. I know, very corny.

Spending the entire weekend tracking down appropriate pictures, videos and articles to make the mindmap come to life was accompanied by the endless sneezing and snuffling of my nose.  Infection from all those school kids has finally set in, and I am tainted. At least now I have a comprehensive understanding of the history of Instructional Technology and a trash-can full of tissues.  I could have just read the textbook, but then I would have had no reason to yell at my family for asking me silly questions when everything was going wrong.

 I also made a Tagxedo to enhance the presentation and spent some time rearranging the Webspiration so it wasn't so busy, then Brian really fixed it and it looks nice now.  Too big to actually read the screen capture in a photo here, you will have to be content with my Tagxedo instead.  I was unable to do the things I REALLY wanted to do with this project.  I wanted a blinking eye between the  time eras, and I wanted to shoot words out of a cannon or a rocket as a transition as well.  I especially wanted a photo of Tompkins with the macs from the 80's to include, but I can't always get what I want. The transitions won't work well in a  web 2.0 sharing scenario unless I convert the entire thing to a movie.  This will not work for me because of the video clips I want to have in it.   The audience will be able to just move ahead after they watch what THEY want.  Oh, well, best laid plans...