I have had a lot of positive feedback from people that attended my session yesterday. Here is one question I have asked those that attended.
How many of the pictures in the attributions section could you relate back to the topics?
Ideally, the right image and message can stick in your memory better than text alone. It’s called stickiness. It’s one reason pictures are so important in a presentation.
In case you missed it, here is slide six again.
I wish more people did this, but I can’t seem to make it happen on my own. For the last three years I have saved all my links for my talk at the eTech Ohio conference using a del.icio.us tag of eTechOhio06, eTechOhio07, eTechOhio08, respectively. By doing this, I can give one URL during my talk, and all the attendees can access all my links from that one URL. Here is the link from today’s talk:
http://del.icio.us/atrusty/eTechOhio08
I started my presentation with the links. I had four pages of links (about 60 total). I flipped through in less than ten seconds. That was followed by slide six with one URL that will go to a page listing all 60 links.
During a talk, it seems like such a waste of time to stop and let everyone write down all the URLs. Chances are, many will write down the wrong addresses, especially if the links are long. One top of that, writing links onto a piece of paper more than doubles the work. You have to go back to your computer and type them in manually. In a month, when you have a situation requiring one of those links, you won’t have that piece of paper with you.
By placing all the links into del.icio.us, I have assured that none of the links will be misspelled and no one will have to manually type any of them into a browser. Go to my list and click on the link you want. It’s just that simple.
I am putting the final touches on my presentation for the eTech Ohio 2008 conference. I have more than 300 hundred slides and only 45 minutes to present. Timing is critical. To get ready I have been practicing using my iPod Touch.
PowerPoint has a “Save As” option that permits slides to be saved as JPG files. Each slide is saved as a separate file called SLIDE#.JPG where # is the slide number. I imported the pictures into my iPod Touch. Using the normal scrolling action, I can go through the slides on the iPod any time I have a few spare minutes.
I did have one little hiccup in the process. SLIDE1.JPG was followed by SLIDE10.JPG which was followed by SLIDE100.JPG. I solved the problem using my favorite renaming tool – Flexible Renamer. I told it to add “00” to the first ten slides making SLIDE1.JPG into SLIDE001.JPG, etc. After that I added one zero to slides 10 through 99. All the file names after 99 were OK as they were. Renaming this way took a few seconds and arranged all the slides in the proper order on my iPod Touch.
A very informative Frontline aired last night. You can still watch it online:
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/kidsonline
Frontline talks with children and families about online activities. If you have kids at home and they are online, you should watch this show.
NASA has released an RFI to develop a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game that creates interactions that foster the creative and problem solving skills of our youth. An MMO game is one where players interact with other players instead of computer controlled participants. Instead of five or ten players, there are hundreds or thousands. That’s the “massively” part.
This environment could permit students from all over the Internet to simulate a full scale NASA launch complete with separate launch and control centers, and even multiple spacecraft. In an MMO game, every person visible in the simulation is controlled by an actual person. This creates a much more dynamic environment because it is much less predictable.
Here is how the RFI describes the game.
A NASA-based MMO built on a game engine that includes powerful physics capabilities could support accurate in-game experimentation and research. It should simulate real NASA engineering and science missions in a medium that is comfortable and familiar to the majority of students in the United States today.
Exciting!
