Workshop descriptions

CD burning - Introduction - workshop
Learn how to save your electronic student handouts and other learning/review tools onto a CD, make copies and provide to students.

Participants will use a variety of Windows tools and software to create cds.

Student Response Systems - adding engagement - and learning! - to the classroom - workshop
If you want to learn to create and use student-response interactive presentations in your classroom, this workshop is where you will learn it.

Also known as “clickers” and “student remotes,” student response systems allow instructors measure students’ understanding of a topic immediately after the topic’s presentation or activity. Using PowerPoint and some simple additional software, instructors can modify question-and-answer slides and instantly tabulate results.

Students like the clickers because they are interactive and fun to use. Other uses include “quiz bowl” type games, reviews, and quizzes.

In this two hour workshop, participants will use PowerPoint and student response system software to create interactive PowerPoint slides that request and tally answers from the audience. Participants will also play “student” and interact with other’s presentations.

The student response system equipment and/or software is available to check out by any faculty member on any campus.

Creating Digital Audio/Podcasting workshop

Recording Digital Audio Using Sound Recorder (PDF, 2 pages, 62K) The simplest and easiest method

Compressing a Digital Audio File using iTunes (PDF, 4 pages, 55K) If you're already comfortable with iTunes, this is an easy way to compress audio files. Be aware that iTunes creates larger file sizes and fewer options than Audacity.

It’s called by many names; podcasting, digital lectures, on-line audio…digital audio is a valuable resource for both faculty and students. When I’m covering a difficult topic in my classes, or when I wish to provide further examples on specific subjects, I create 5-minute “mini-lectures” and provide them via Blackboard. Now that I’ve had some practice, it takes roughly 15 minutes to create a 5-minute audio lecture.

In this two hour workshop we will use the free Audacity(tm) software to record and convert digital audio to mp3 files. The finished files can be listened to on any computer, portable mp3 player, or burned to CD or DVD.

Digital Images/Photography -  Bring your digital camera, cables and manual, and be prepared to cover the spectrum of shooting, editing and using digital images.

Digital Images Workshop Handout (1.3mg, .pdf, 24 pages)

Topics include:
-digital camera controls and features
-the top 3 camera setting you need to know about
-composing a good photo
-transferring camera photos to a computer
-why did I crash my friend's email when I sent my picture?!
-compressing images for PowerPoint, the Web, and email
-image editing software - what's available and how to use it

Digital Games we can use for instruction workshop

Digital Games workshop PowerPoint

Digital Games workshop handout - PDF

Many faculty like and use the PowerPoint Jeopardy™ game available on the FIT web site. My students often ask to play it. It’s a great review and learning tool.

We will start with this Jeopardy game, but there are many more games and tools available that are usable  in instruction. I’ve searched out the best, and we will spend this workshop reviewing and learning to customize these games to use in class. Participants will leave with a CD containing the games covered.

Digital Video

Digital Video Workshop Powerpoint

ePortfolios workshop
An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio or digital portfolio, is defined in Wikipedia as “a cohesive, powerful, and well-designed collection of electronic documents that demonstrate your skills, education, professional development, and the benefits you offer to a target reader. An e-portfolio can be seen as a type of learning record that provides actual evidence of achievement.”

This workshop explores the use of electronic portfolios for both faculty and students. We will look at some of the ePortfolio tools available to us at Gateway including the Portfolio component of Blackboard and some open-source tools. We will discuss the three main types of ePortfolios, and view examples of different ways that ePortfolios are being used.  

Participants will use the Blackboard ePortfolio tool to learn the basics of creating an electronic portfolio.

Faculty Web Page

Learning Objects – Where to find them, how to use them - workshop
Learning objects are self-contained “chunks” of content. A learning object is designed to present one concept in its entirety. A page in a textbook can be considered a learning object, or a short PowerPoint that covers 1 topic.

Learning Objects (note the capitols) are usually the electronic learning aids we have available to use from Wisc-Online, other colleges and the general Internet community. You may be familiar with a well-known peer-reviewed learning object repository called Merlot. There are many other repositories and sources of free quality learning objects. Learn about some of the most useful repositories, how to search them to find learning objects covering YOUR content, how to evaluate a good learning object, and how to access and/or save learning objects to use it in your instruction.

PowerPoint Fundamentals
PowerPoint fundamentals in PDF format

PowerPoint fundamentals same handout in a PowerPoint slide show

This workshop is for those who haven’t used PowerPoint very much and those who would like a refresher on creating presentations. During this 3-hour workshop, participants will use PowerPoint to create a multi-slide presentation which includes text, images and links. We will also incorporate a variety of slide layouts, explore the use of color and design, and practice with some standard PowerPoint animations. The principles of effective presentation design will also be introduced.

Topics
1. Presentation basics
2. Creating your title slide
3. Adding new slides
4. Adding bulleted text
5. Changing slide layouts
6. Inserting clip art and images
7. Hyper linking to other slides, other files, or the Internet
8. Slide designs, colors and backgrounds
9. Basic animations
10. The Slide Master

PowerPoint Advanced and Advanced Topics - workshop
Move to the next level to create more professional and effective PowerPoints. Topics include:   creating video-like effects with animations, overlapping slide objects,  techniques to focus audience attention, sources for more design templates and images/clip art, layers, adding narration to slides, embedding voiceover, music, video and more.

Topics
1. Autoshapes
2. Manipulating placeholders
3. Inserting videos
4. Finding "fresh" images and clipart
5. Cropping images
6. Altering the order position of slide objects
7. Animating text and images
8. Inserting clip art and images
9. Recording audio into PowerPoint
10. Play audio from a CD behind a PowerPoint

PowerPoint Advanced - handout in PDF format

PowerPoint Advanced - same document in PowerPoint format

(Avoiding) PowerPoint Bloat
Techniques to resize your PowerPoint and it's images to make the presentation usable online

Avoiding Ppt Bloat In a PowerPoint slide show format

Topics
1. Splitting long PowerPoints into several smaller files
2. Cropping images
3. Resampling images (changing to fewer dpi)
4. Resizing images (changing to fewer total pixels)
5. Saving as a compressed image file

There are no more workshops scheduled for the rest of the Spring 07 semester. If you need assistance with a topic, please email me at seep@gtc.edu and I'll be happy to meet you at your campus.