Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Astronauts and Presentations.

Astronaut Abby!
Abigail Harrison is a young woman with a big dream, to be the first astronaut on Mars.  Abby's dream grew into so much more when she started using social media to reach out to people and learn more about what she wanted to do.  The growth of her social media accounts have given her the opportunity to not only run her own programs, like Mars Generation which is a non-profit preparing the students of today to become the leaders of tomorrow, but she was also selected to be the Earth liaison to Italian Astronaut, Luca Parmitano, while he was up in the space station.  One tip that she gave my class was not to over expose yourself and to only focus on the social media accounts that help you the most, which for her were Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.  Good luck to Abby! I can't wait to hear about her adventures!

In Other Space Related News..
Scott Kelly has returned from a year on the International Space Station!  His recent return was documented on Snapchat for everyone to see! Here are some pictures capturing the exciting day!








Okay, Now Let's Stop Spacing Out and Look at Some Presentation Tools!
In the semester where I have been doing the least amount of presentation, and my last semester of college, I finally learn about all of these presentation tools that are so much better than just standing in front of a PowerPoint presentation.  A presentation is supposed to be more than just reading off slides.  In fact, the slides are mostly there for "decoration" and shouldn't be the entire presentation.  There are some tools that allow you to create a more interesting backdrop for your presentation.  Some examples include Animoto, Emaze, Office Mix, Haiku Deck, Powtoon, and more!  The two that I have found easy to navigate and fun to use are Animoto and Emaze.

Animoto is more of a video presentation.  It offers you templates and then you place in the pictures and text.  After picking a song you can add in as many pictures and text boxes as it takes to finish the song.  The one thing I liked about this tool was that it only let you add a certain amount of text to each slide, limiting you so that there isn't too much.  Here's a video that I made on Animoto.com promoting my major here at Stockton University.




Emaze is also run by templates that you can choose from.  All you have to do is add the pictures and writing and you're good to go.  It is very interesting because a lot of the templates are 3-D, making the presentation more creative.  It is also similar to a video with the ability to add notes, voice, and set timing.  Here's a basic Emaze presentation that I made about what I'm doing for Spring break.  



Powered by emaze

Here's Some Article's About More Presentation Tools..
Microsoft Sway - if you're presenting over the computer, then Sway is perfect for you!  With the cloud being utilized, Sway presentations can be viewed anywhere without formatting problems and also embedded onto websites and blogs.  The editing is also based on a story line, making the editing easy for everyone.

GoAnimate - Similar to Animoto, GoAnimate is a video presentation that comes with backgrounds, templates, characters, and even languages and accents for the characters.  This is a great tool for teachers to use because if your class is registered then students presentations cannot be viewed by the public.


Office Mix - This is a free expansion for anyone who already owns PowerPoint on their computer.  You can even take PowerPoint presentations that you have already made and upload them to Office Mix to upgrade it!  With this expansion you can add video and voice to the presentation, draw and mark up the slides during the presentation, and you can also embed your presentations.  This tool is keeping PowerPoint alive in the midst of all of these fascinating new tools.

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