we're slidesharing! :)

05/29/2010

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have you ever spent a ton of time preparing a powerpoint only to have it not open on your teacher's computer, or disappear from the gaucho server, or not download from your email? sucks, doesn't it? well, don't let this happen to you (again). share your presentations on slideshare.

slideshare is "the world's largest online community for sharing presentations," but you can share more than just powerpoints. you can also upload word docs and pdfs and even add audio to turn your presentations into webinars! :) you can also export and upload your sliderockets. you can favorite and comment on presentations you like and follow the people who made them and join groups of slidesharers with similar interests.

the casa people on slideshare so far are:
* mr. buchmann
* mrs. reed
* the counseling department
* and the library

i set up the counseling department's slideshare account last summer. since then, their powerpoints have been seen more than 550 times! that's a lot more looks than they would have got on someone's flash drive!

and as for our teachers, it just makes sense to have students submit assignments in this way so that they can all be viewed anywhere anytime. i taught these teachers and their students how to slideshare, and if you're interested, i can teach you and yours, too! it's fun and it's easy! :)

i think every casa student, teacher, and department ought to have a slideshare account and store their school stuff for free if only as a backup to our school's often unreliable network (aka the gaucho server).

it'd also be nice to have a network of casa staff and students and an electronic record of our teaching and your learning.

for you students, your slideshare account becomes a sort of electronic portfolio of your academic work that you can share with prospective employers and future colleges, not to mention your grandma at christmastime! :)

so check out slideshare, and if you do create an account, post a comment and let us know what you think of it. and be sure to follow us at slideshare.net/bighouselibrary! :)
 
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making SlideRockets w/ classes :)

02/20/2009

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i made SlideRockets w/ a class 4 the 1st time this week! woo hoo! =)

(for more info about making SlideRockets with classes, click here.)

well, it went well but w/ a few glitches...

1. in SlideRocket u can't edit html except 2 hyperlink

2. in SlideRocket u can't embed a YouTube video easily (if you can even view YouTube video that isn't blocked @ school)

i tweeted SlideRocket 4 tech support and they said this:

1. "We don't let you edit HTML in SlideRocket but you can add an HTML link to an object. Just select your object then go to the Tools menu and Select Hyperlink. You can link your presentation to another slide or to an external link."

2. "We don't have a super tight integration with YouTube just yet, it's still in development but we do have a work around. At this time SlideRocket cannot directly embed a YouTube video. Instead you will need to use a free 3rd party service such as http://kej.tw/flvretriever/ which will allow you to save any YouTube video to your hard drive as a flash video. You can then import a flash video into your SlideRocket presentation."

nice. this helps. thanks, SlideRocket! =)

but now for glitches 3 & 4...

3. the teacher wanted each student to create 5 slides and then combine the slides of 3 or 4 students into 1 sliderocket. but how to combine slides created by different users prior to publishing the sliderocket as a webpage? 2 options:

a. invite a user to view your slide rocket: in the presentations tab, click the invite icon

OR...

b. add the slides to your sliderocket library click tools > add slide to library > under permissions, click the advanced tab > then click the + to add a user or group by email do this for each slide > then 1 user inserts all shared slides into 1 SlideRocket

the problem with both of these workarounds was glitch 4:

the limitations of the free account...

because the students had just signed up for new accounts w/ no previous usage history, they were able to invite people their teacher to view their presentations. (this was a good thing for them, because if she couldn't see them, she couldn't grade them!)

i, on the other hand, was not so lucky. i must have exceeded what was available to me for free from SlideRocket because i could not (and still cannot) invite others to view my presentations, nor can i share them.

the error message i get says: "We're sorry but this feature is not available to your current account level. If you'd like access to this and any of these other great SlideRocket features, please click the Upgrade my account button below."

and yet on SlideRocket's solutions page it says this:

"SlideRocket will always have a free account option for everyone." but i can't "spread the presentation love" if i can't share my presentations. ugh. i'll tweet them back and let you know what they say.

i'm still a SlideRocket lover, because i'm a PowerPoint hater, but they've obviously still got some kinks to work out. i just hope they do soon! =)

p.s. the SlideRocket team told me every time i tweet about them i'm entered into a monthly drawing for a free account. they suggested i re-tweet their tweets to increase my chances of winning. while i'm tempted by the lure of free stuff, i am ideologically opposed to spam. sorry, SlideRocket. guess i'll just have to play to pay! =P


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