Katy ISD: Wolman Elementary School Preview

Copyright for Educators Revision 5

Mozley copyright 5th_revision_final

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For this week, I found some upbeat music to add to the introduction of the presentation. I also added some public domain works. I set it up to run on a continuous loop so that at the start of the presentation, it will be running as people are settling in. I added a picture of my grandson coloring, to illustrate the fact that we cannot copy original works of art unless we have permission. I think the music and the addition of the works of art to start off with are appealing. They may pique the audience's emotional side to help me connect with them.

Chapter 9 Reflections: They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark

The things we take in through our senses cause us to feel emotions, whether they be good or bad emotions. As Burmark states in this chapter, “emotions stick!”(Burmark, 2011, Kindle Location 3251). You want to connect with your audience on an emotional level to get the learning to stick with them. Emotions take the content very quickly to the well organized storehouse in the brain. Learning that sticks with you is stored in the well organized storehouse and learning that is difficult to retrieve at a later date is just thrown in the “junk drawer” of the brain. You may be able to retrieve the stuff in the “junk drawer”, but it will take longer and it is not as efficient.
Art and images are a great example of things that make us feel emotional. Somewhere in our DNA is something that connects these images so strongly to our emotions that we as humans have dedicated buildings to preserve and protect these images. Why else would entire museums be created to house works of art? That tells me that our emotions are tied so strongly to them that by protecting them, we are declaring they are sacred to us in some way.
Putting your audience in the right frame of mind at the beginning is very crucial to your role as the deliverer of the information. Connecting to their emotions through visual and auditory media is a great way to accomplish this. You don’t want them to just be entertained for those 60 minutes, but take the information and store it for later use.

Burmark, Lynell (2011-06-28). They Snooze, You Lose: The Educator's Guide to Successful Presentations (Kindle Location 3251). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

Chapter 8 Reflections: They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark

Music is almost like another language that speaks to people on another level other than spoken language. It is very true that music can spark all of your senses and recall long hidden memories in your brain. How often have you heard a song played on the radio that takes you back to a certain time and place in your life? For some reason, music helps our brains to quickly recover memories that have been lying dormant. Not only the memory, but feelings associated with that memory. As Burmark says, it can be “mood altering” (Burmark, 2011, Kindle Location 2820). One example of this is my son’s eighth grade orchestra winter performance. They played the song “Sleigh Ride” by Leroy Anderson, and for the life of me, I can’t remember anything else about that day, but I do remember the feeling I got when that song played. I was so proud of my son for that outstanding performance. The music was awesome and hearing his cello along with the other instruments just gave me the chills. I was in awe of that performance. It has been 6 years since that day, but today whenever I hear that song, it takes me back to that unforgettable performance and I feel that pride again.
I have used music in the classroom for various things and have found it to be very helpful. I would play music over my ipod in the morning when the children came in to the class. My favorite to play was “Celebrate” by Earth, Wind, & Fire. It really got the kids in a good mood and helped them be motivated to organize their materials for the day. I would use calming music during silent reading time like a quiet instrumental. Marching band music is a good one when it is time to line up. Music when used properly can have a desired effect on most.

Burmark, Lynell (2011-06-28). They Snooze, You Lose: The Educator's Guide to Successful Presentations (Kindle Location 2820). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

Chapter 7 Reflections: They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark

This chapter really gave me a lot to think about in terms of what to keep and what to toss out of my presentation. I had a slide that stated the law about what can be copyrighted. Well, legal speak is very formal and uptight. So I went about to revamp that slide according to the suggestions of the author to get the point across to the audience with as few words as you can and incorporating photos. I completed the exercise that she suggested in the section titled, “Focusing on the Essentials”(Burmark, 2011, Kindle Location 2307). The result was a much cleaner version with less legal speak, kind of humorous, and a large graphic. Knowing how to size the graphics you use is an important lesson in order to keep your presentation looking professional. You definitely don’t want to use graphics that look obviously distorted or stretched, unless that is the look you are going for.

References
Burmark, Lynell (2011-06-28). They Snooze, You Lose: The Educator's Guide to Successful Presentations (Kindle Location 2307). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

Copyright for Educators Revision 4

Mozley copyright 4th_revision_final

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In trying to add humor to my presentation according to Burmark's advice that humor connects to the audience, I have changed some of my slides to give the presentation a more humorous style. I added several slides with humorous photographs and just a little text to keep the audience focused on the learning. I changed the title slide just a bit for design purposes. I have tried to keep the "less is more" attitude when it comes to text on the slides.

Chapter 6 Reflections: They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark

I can’t tell you how many times I have been in a classroom and thought about that movie, Matilda, and that mean principal. School should be a place for fun and learning. Learning should not be synonymous with boring. I have done crazy things in my class before just to break up the monotony of the day. One time, my students were kind of excited after we had come back to class from a program in the cafeteria. In order to get their attention, I acted like I was had to tell them something really important, then mid-sentence I walked out of the room and closed the door behind me. Of course, I stood outside the door for just a few seconds. When I walked back in, you could have heard a pin drop. They were all quiet wanting to know what I was going to say. The element of surprise (Burmark, 2011, Kindle Location 2307) is the best attention getter, not yelling or frustration.

Reference
Burmark, Lynell (2011-06-28). They Snooze, You Lose: The Educator's Guide to Successful Presentations (Kindle Location 2307). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

Chapter 5 Reflections: They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark

I really love the way Burmark writes. It is such an easy read and very humorous in the way she presents the material. She has some great ideas for presenters. Making abstract ideas more concrete for students can be a daunting task. I think more teachers need to get in touch with their inner child and find the simple humor in bland ideas or a way to connect them with humor. Students will be much more likely to connect with the material and internalize it when laughter is involved. The 10 minutes instruction and 2 minute discussion is something that I have used in my classroom and it has been very effective (Burmark, 2011, Kindle Location 1646). I just announce to the students to “turn and talk to your partner about . . . .”. They like it and it gives them the opportunity for some interaction. I have also used the technique of comparing and contrasting for assignments. This really helps them to categorize and compartmentalize concepts.

References
Burmark, Lynell (2011-06-28). They Snooze, You Lose: The Educator's Guide to Successful Presentations (Kindle Location 1646). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

Copyright for Educators Revision 3

Copyright 3rd revision

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Based on getting the audience's attention, I decided to rework the title page. I made the graphic the background and used a different type font. I added some animations to make things a bit more interesting. Some of the pictures I was not happy with so I changed them. A few of the slides have a white background which I thought the pictures would really stand out well on this. I gave the slides transitions to break up the monotony. It is on its way to being a great presentation.

Chapter 4 Reflections: They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark

I would say that in the last 20 years, our society has become the most distracted society in the history of the world. We are bombarded constantly with images, information, and sounds. Sitting in my living room, I am typing on my laptop, while a streaming video plays through the television, my cell phone by my side, and my son walks through with his ipod connected to his head. If a time traveler from the 1700’s were to travel to 2012, they might think we were part machine because of our gadgets. Presenters have the daunting task of not only getting the audience’s attention, but then keeping it. Burmark uses the analogy of Velcro when talking about “hooking” the audience and drawing them in (Burmark, 2011, Kindle Location 1392). Having a “hook” is great, but you have to be able to keep them there for the duration. Burmark uses the acronym, CHIMES to describe the different ways to capture and keep the audience’s attention (Burmark, 2011, Kindle Location 1432). All of this great advice can seem to be a bit overwhelming to think about when creating a presentation, but I like how she is realistic about it in saying, “you can pick a few now and learn about the others later”(Burmark, 2011, Kindle Location 1438).

Burmark, Lynell (2011-06-28). They Snooze, You Lose: The Educator's Guide to Successful Presentations (Kindle Location 1392, 1432, and 1438). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

Chapter 3 Reflections: They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark

A few years ago, I went to a conference called “Teach Like a Rock Star”. The presenter must have read this book, because apparently he knew all the techniques to a compelling presentation. There was not a boring moment and he definitely employed all of the 10 tips given by Steve Jobs. Giving a good presentation is a lot like being a performer and it definitely takes a lot of time and energy to prepare a crowd pleasing show. The author of this book gives great examples that I had connections with. The example of the teacher in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was right on the money. I don’t know how many times I have been at a training and the phrase: “Anyone? Anyone?” is lolling through my head as my mind is aimlessly wandering. I can totally relate to being a student in that class. I hope to become a better presenter, but this just goes to show you that it does take thought and preparation.

Revision of Copyright Presentation

Copyright 2nd revision

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Based on Burmark's design strategies in Chapters 1 & 2 I made the following revisions:

1. Darkened the blue background so that the yellow text stood out more.
2. I deleted several slides that had too much text. I decided the text would be better used on the handouts.
3. I added new photos, not just clip art. I used these photos as the slide itself.
4. I deleted some text boxes from existing slides and enlarged the font that was remaining.

Chapter 2 Reflections: They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark

I can’t tell you how many presentations I have been to and said, “They could have just emailed me the PowerPoint and saved me the whole day of sitting here bored out of my mind!” I do despise trainings where the presenter reads verbatim from the slides for 6 hours. What an eye opener about the three parts of a presentation having separate jobs but working together to “create” the show. The author gives a great thought provoking statement when she says, “The solution—the last-ditch attempt at fixing boring slideshows—is to recognize that the problem is not the three aspects of a presentation themselves
1. Slides
2. Handouts
3. Presenter
The problem comes from making them redundant rather than complementary or synergistic”(Burmark, 2011). The dual channels of learning: visual followed by auditory was an interesting concept to think about when designing a presentation. What I understood to be the key concept for a presentation is give them a graphic to be thinking about, then throw some text at them and let the audience make their own connections to their learning.
She made a great point about losing the audience to their gadgets. I must confess I am very guilty of that transgression, but maybe if the presenter designed their presentation with these points in mind I would have been more in tune.
Needless to say, when I grow up, I want to make presentations just like Dr. Burmark!!

References
Burmark, Lynell (2011-06-28). They Snooze, You Lose: The Educator's Guide to Successful Presentations (Kindle Locations 788-792 & 793-794). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

Chapter 1 Reflections: They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark

This book should be required reading for all teachers. It has some great tips for creating great presentations. I just had to sit through training where the information was given to us on a PowerPoint. It had lots of text on each slide and very little graphics other than the very busy background. Granted the pedagogy of TELPAS testing is not a spine tingling subject, but it could have been at least a little more palatable. It wasn't long before I tuned out and started checking email on my phone and running through the day's events. I think the average person has a lot to learn about creating an effective presentation. There is a lot more to learn about creating a PowerPoint than just filling slides with text. A presentation is meant to be a visual aid and not a novel. With a little knowledge of color, text, and graphics a boring presentation can be taken up a notch. After reading the first chapter, I thought of all the terrible presentations that I had created over the years. Now I am critiquing every presentation that I see.

Copyright for Educators

The copyright conundrum for_educators(1)

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The Copyright Crash Course

WOW! Talk about a lot of information. It is no wonder that copyright is so confusing! There are so many gray areas that you have to really be sure before you use someone's work that it is allowable. Educators have a little more freedom for using copyrighted materials, but there are still some restrictions and criteria that must be met. I had taken a copyright course years ago and since that time there have been modifications and amendments to copyright law. So this was really good information to know. I think we have yet to see the end of changes in the law since the digital age has brought and continues to bring new issues to the table.