Freepath--a new 2.0 tool

"Freepath--a tool a librarian (and a teacher and a presenter and a student) can love - Every once in a while a new tool makes me almost want to be a PC user. Take Freepath, launched yesterday in public beta." From Joyce Valenza on her blog, Neverendingsearch - read about it here

This looks like a fantastic tool to bring a lot of our web 2.0 tools together and use them easily. I hope I can open it at school! I'll let you know

PowerPointlessness, or How to do it better

I had to pass along this blog post from Joyce Valenza on teaching and encouraging students (and teachers) to create better presentations. At her school, they are trying to help their students create better and more effective presentations for classes and this blog gives you the first chapter on what they tried and how it worked. I recommended it to all of the teachers at my school to help our students prepare classwork and even for themselves (I can say that because I need this too!). It's worth your time to read it if you haven't seen it before.

Joyce Valenza writes on January 20, 2008:
"PowerPoint Reform: a first chapter"

"After 10 years, it was time.

We could not sit through another bullet-ridden, brain-numbing student presentation.

We interviewed the kids.

For them it was just as bad.

They dreaded each others' PowerPoints.

Though we've been using other tools for communication, sometimes the slideshow really seems the best choice. We knew that presentation styles had changed. At conferences and on websites we'd seen so many effective examples. But we knew that breaking 10 years of bad habits was going to be a process. And with PowerPoint so ingrained in our culture, we also expected a fight."

To read the rest, go to: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/130020413.html

Something to Do With Your New 2.0 Wiki Skills

PBwiki Presenter Packs - If you're giving a presentation about wikis,
PBwiki will ship you a free PBwiki t-shirt, an easy-to-read PDF about
wikis, a Powerpoint with pictures of real PBwiki users, and 3 FREE
Gold Premium wikis to give out to your audience. They've already
distributed over 100 Presenter Packs to educators around the world,
and would love to give you one, too.


Get your PBwiki Presenter Pack here:
http://educators.pbwiki.com/PBwiki%20Presenter%20Packs

ZohoShow - a place to share presentations

I just created a 3 slide PowerPoint presentation to upload to ZohoShow to see how it all works. Here's the result.


All of the slide themes carried over. I didn't add any animations, etc., but it was pretty seamless and easy to do. I will try this at school and tell others about it. I didn't discover the answer to my final question yet, but I'll let you all know what I find out.