Creating Standout Images in PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a super tool for image editting. Here's a tutorial on how to create a stand-out image in PowerPoint.

Getting Started

Okay. Here's where I am on the course design. I'm still absorbing tons of information from The Rapid eLearning Blog and Word of Mouth. I had been following The Rapid eLearning Blog for some time. I just started with Word of Mouth since it focuses more on using the Articulate products and I've just gotten my software. I actually got a little overwhelmed this afternoon. So I managed to drop back and go on and create the chapter outline for the course in Desire 2 Learn. Doing this helped me identify a nice starting point, Measures of Central Tendency. Students usually don't have many issues with this section, so it should be easy to do. Before I can do that, I've got to create a stunning template. For a semester long course, I think I'll need several different designs to keep interest. I'll also need different designs based on the course content. For instance, the earlier chapters are less computational than later chapters, so I'll use my space differently. I do think there will be an advantage to keeping some similarity between the designs. I could use one design or color for all of the lessons leading up to one test. Hmmm. . . good idea. Five designs, multiple colors. I think I'll try it.

Content should be easy since I have some publisher provided resources. Using this means that I will have to do it all over if we should change textbooks, but I'm hoping to stick with this one for quite some time.

Course Design

I'm just finishing up my 5-week college algebra class and I'm starting to think about my courses for the fall. One in particular is quite a conundrum. I've been teaching stats online for 11 years. I also teach it on campus. The assignments for each course are the same. I've even hosted them in the same LMS (on-campus and online students together). Because of the technology used in the course (online homework, Excel spreadsheets, online surveys, etc.), I've decided to designate the course as a hybrid class. This protects me from having to deal with on-campus students not wanting to do online work. Here are the catches. First, when I changed the designation, my department chair asked me to release seat time for the course; that is to have the class only one day a week with online work to replace the other day of the week. The second catch and biggest problem is that I have two sections of this course and he only wants me to release seat time for one of them. So one hybrid class would meet once per week, the other would meet twice per week. To make this even more interesting, he wants day one for both sections to be identical and for the class that meets twice per week, on the second day he doesn't want me to "lecture", but have a homework/review/some-kind-of-activities session. The problem with this is that 1) my past experience with hybrids shows that they are dangerous. If the out-of-class time is not well defined, they end up doing nothing and expecting you to double up on the material in the one day per week. 2) For those students attending twice per week, they will still need to go home and engage in some online lecture/activity for about half of the course since I won't be lecturing on day two. I'm interested in any brilliant ideas to pull this off. Here's some other info that might be useful about this scenario. We will use the Sullivan stat's book (new to us this fall) with MML. I give several assignments in Excel, some other online projects and a group final project instead of a final exam. I'm very comfortable with Camtasia and I have access to Articulate Studio. I could have access to an area where there's wi-fi (usually), but I don't think that I will have access to a set of laptop computers. The course will be built in Desire 2 Learn.

I'm starting by identifying the topics that I think are best suited for face-to-face and those that are best for online. I'm also considering ways to verify that students are staying on track with their work. If I have a follow up activity on day two, but they didn't watch the necessary lecture prior to coming to class, that won't go over well. In fact, I think the deadlines for both hybrid sections will have to be much stricter than those for my purely online class. That's about as far as I've gotten.

The point behind this is to compare the hybrid course with on-campus support to the hybrid course without the extra support. Please help!

PowerPoint? Who Knew?!

I think that most folks who've are comfortable with PowerPoint think that it is a simple tool. Even if you've dabbled in animation, you might think that you've mastered PowerPoint. But there is so much more to learn. And the nice thing about it is that it is packaged in the familiarity of PowerPoint. Tom posted 5 Must-Know PowerPoint Tips That Will Save You Time. I bet there's at least one that most PowerPoint users don't know about.

PowerPoint as a Graphics Tool?

Finding out you can create some really neat images using PowerPoint. Here's a cool folder image that can be created in PowerPoint using simple drawing tools. Once created, the drawing can be saved as an image, making it easier to reuse.

Templates, Templates, Templates

Templates seem to be the key to making elearning rapid and powerful. Tom Kuhlmann at the Rapid e-Learning Blog opened my eyes to the POWER of PowerPoint. He's made several posts on designing your own templates. Here's just some of them.

How To Deisgn Custom PowerPoint Templates for E-Learning

Here's a Free PowerPoint Template & How I Made It

The Secrets to Creating Your Own PowerPoint Templates for E-Learning

Here's How I Built That PowerPoint E-Learning Template

Color Schemes

Ran across a couple of tools to help you develop a color scheme. Kuler has over 15,000 color schemes. It shows you large blocks of the colors in the scheme. This should be useful when you are looking for something fresh. These schemes are accessible through Adobe CS4.
Pixie is useful for determining the colors that are used on images that are visible on your computer screen. Just hover over the color to determine its RGB representation.
The Color Scheme Designer is basically a color wheel that gives you monochromatic schemes, complementary schemes, triadic schemes, etc., at just a touch of a button.
The Color Schemer allows you to make your own color scheme. This could be useful even in scrapbooking.