Tired of death-by-powerpoint at conference after conference. I'm sure many of us are, yet I am just as guilty. Why? (1) It's easy... we can recycle previous presentations without much work. (2) The conference organizers can assure that they will support it and we don't want to take any risks of our presentation being an epic fail. (3) We are used to it... old habits die hard. I was asked to give a presentation recently about Communicating Climate Change to a college seminar class and decided that I would try something different. I had heard about Prezi for the first time almost a year ago, but never bothered investigate it. Here was my perfect opportunity! I was glad that I made the effort. The interface was straightforward and it really helped me to organize my thoughts. The end result... it was fun to create and I spent 10 minutes just explaining to the students and prof how I built the presentation. I could some neat multiple-scale presentations, perhaps similar in structure to the Powers of 10 video below. I will definitely be using Prezi for future presentations. How about you?
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A couple of weeks ago, I posted on a Virtual Climate Conference that was held in Second Life. I know you've been all awaiting with bated breath on the results. There were 30-50 participants (mostly educators) that participated from throughout the country. The virtual conference (held entirely in Second Life) was put on by NOAA with technical support from Raytheon from Sept 26-28th (2 hours each day). The conference was intended to be an experiment to see if this format is something NOAA should look at moving forward with online conferences (vs. standard WebEX, etc). It introduced participants to the NOAA Island in Second Life, common climate misconceptions, a national view of climate education efforts, various climate related interactive visualizations, and concluded with a treasure hunt. This was my first experience attending (and presenting) at a conference in Second Life so there was a bit of time spent orienting myself to the space (learning how to move, fly, adjust camera angles) and learning how to use the various presenter tools (virtual whiteboard, web viewer). I shared the NOAA Global Science Investigator (a 3D virtual globe) and had participants stand up and move their avatar on a virtual map (see below) as I posed various climate related questions. For example, I asked them them to stand where they thought major carbon dioxide sources would be before revealing the answer. All in all, I thought it was a good experience and allowed me to think a bit outside the box (i.e. how to encourage avatars to participate by moving through space). It did require quite a bit of technical assistance and there was a significant amount of time invested in getting both the presenters and participants up to speed on learning all of the tools in Second Life. The bottom line: For a long conference (spread out over several days) that uses assets in a 3-D world, Second Life may be a good alternative (i.e. saving costs and reducing carbon footprint) to meeting in person. If the conference or meetings last a day or two, it may be best to choose a synchronous tool like Blackboard Collaborate instead given the large initial time investment in Second Life. |
ETEC 622 Blog
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