Keeping In Touch with Technology

On Tuesday 5^th December we had a training day with Belinda Metcalf of Intouch. It was a day where we were extended in our knowledge about Powerpoint, Photo Story and Excel for developing engaging lesson content – backed up by many examples from the Teachers Intouch Lesson Portal which we have subscribed to as well. PBB staff check My School from Staffnet for details.

We also had a good introduction to Producer, the free Powerpoint add on which none of us had used before. Bobby, of course, had had a play with it for a couple of days after downloading, and was pretty proficient by the time he got to the session. I’d be more jealous of his quick uptake if he wasn’t quite so generous with helping the rest of us.

Looking forward to having more time to explore Producer. For those unfamiliar, it lets you make a product – web based when published – which can combine video, images, slides, audio and html. Looking at an example or two is probably the best way to get it. Explorer is needed to view these.

Newsflash from Northhampton University is a bit dry, but gives a flavour of what you could do with this. It is fast, even for a newsflash, but there is a pause button.

Earthquakes is from the Microsoft site. This is a student production and much more engaging.

Interpreting Visual Texts uses far too few pictures, given its subject matter, but has excellent information and uses the crafty idea of an avatar to replace the flesh and blood narrator. This is Australian from the Association of Independent Schools.

Comments from other participants welcome!