Pecha Kucha, Ignite and Flash Sessions

Pecha Kucha, pronounced “pe-chak-cha” (see http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdghID66kLs for help with the pronunciation) “is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images.” Pecha Kucha presentations (also called Flash or Sprint sessions) typically use 20 PowerPoint slides each displayed for 20 seconds which limit the presenter to 6 minutes and 40 seconds to convey a concept or idea.

Ignite Law is a weekly Pecha Kucha event held in Chicago for lawyers and is free (with a ticket). It’s just one example of regularly scheduled Pecha Kucha sessions around the country. Many educational conferences are beginning to incorporate this type of event within their conference schedule. An example is the upcoming Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology (SIDLIT) sponsored by Colleague to Colleague and JCCC (supported by Staff and Organizational Development and the Ed Tech Center). Check out http://www.c2conline.org/ or http://www.sidlit.org/ for more information.

If you’d like to see video from the Ignite Law sessions, check out http://www.ignitelaw.com/video/. Additionally, you can see a Pecha Kucha training video about Pecha Kucha presentations at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGaCLWaZLI4.

Could this concept be valuable in the classroom? Or maybe there’s an application for PowerPoint Karaoke (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSsj0wmeS00&NR=1).

Embedding a YouTube Video in a PowerPoint Slideshow

The following steps walk you through embedding a YouTube video in a PowerPoint slideshow. Note that this approach only works when you have access to the internet (both during creation of the slideshow and playback). You can watch a YouTube video that demonstrates this process at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChq5drjQl4. The steps listed below draw heavily on the video by Laura Bergells of www.Maniactive.com.

1. Be sure you have an active Internet connection.
2. Open PowerPoint and be sure the Developer tab is visible.
3. If Developer tab is not visible, go to the Office button (upper left corner), click on it and then select PowerPoint options (lower right of menu box that appears).
4. Select Popular (left margin of menu box) and select the Show Developer tab in the Ribbon check box.
5. Select OK button.
6. Add a new slide (can be any type or blank).
7. Now that the Developer tab is visible, select it and select More Controls icon (looks like a crossed hammer and wrench).
8. Scroll all the way down until you find the Shockwave Flash Object (the list is alphabetical), select it and click OK.
9. Now draw with your cursor/mouse the rectangular area within which you want the video to appear.
10. You can use the handles on the rectangle to resize the image size.
11. Now go to YouTube and locate the video you want to include.
12. When you find the video, go to the box that includes the URL and Embed tag.
13. Select the entire URL and press Ctrl+C to copy the URL to the clipboard.
14. Go back to PowerPoint and right click on the rectangle target area that you created in which to play the video.
15. Select Properties from the menu that appears when you right click.
16. In the Properties box that appears, click on box behind the Movie label and press Ctrl+V to paste the URL into that Properties field.
17. Now you must edit the URL. Wherever you see “watch?” delete it.
18. Wherever you see the equal sign (=) replace it with a slash (/).
19. Still in the Properties box, if you don’t want the movie to loop, change the Loop setting to False.
20. If you don’t want the movie to start playing automatically, change the Playing setting to False.
21. When finished, close the Properties box.
22. If you need to reposition the video, do so using the handles on the rectangle.
23. Press F5 to preview.
24. Click the play button (center of the screen image).
25. Notice that you have access to the regular video controls to pause and restart the video as well as to adjust the volume.
26. When the movie finishes, if you have additional slides, you can click to forward to the new slide.

Clickers in the Classroom

Student response systems (affectionately called clickers) are being integrated into instruction at both the high school and college level. This semester, we have over 20 faculty members at JCCC using the TurningPoint clicker system. TurningPoint Technologies offers three different applications for use with their clicker system: TurningPoint 2008 (which works hand-in-hand with PowerPoint to add special interactive slides with questions and then displays the responses received from students in graph form), TurningPoint Anywhere 2008 (which overlays any computer application and can be used to poll, survey, collect and display student responses; e.g., you can use the overlay on top of a screen displaying a Word document, a web site, an Excel document, or literally any application), and ResponseWare Web (which collects student responses using a web site; that is, it can be used in a classroom where all students have access to a computer or it can be used when students have their own wireless laptop or cell phone with Internet access). ResponseWare Web can also be used with distance learning students, since only web access is required…no student clicker is needed..

If you’re one of those faculty members using TurningPoint, one of the first lessons we try to teach is that after installing the software, users should set the default option for the TurningPoint 2008 add-in to always appear in PowerPoint. If you do so, you don’t need to open TurningPoint 2008 and then open a PowerPoint slideshow. With the option set, you can simply open PowerPoint and the TurningPoint 2008 add-in is loaded automatically and available. To turn on this setting:

1. Open TurningPoint 2008.
2. Select the TurningPoint tab (in Office 2007 version).
3. Select the Tools > Settings command.
4. In the Presentation settings (select in the left panel), under the Misc section (you’ll need to scroll down in the right panel), change the value for “Add-In always loaded” to True (click on the word False and use the drop-down to select True).
5. Click Done (bottom of window).

You only have to do this once and then TurningPoint will always be loaded when you start PowerPoint. Then you can dispense with the TurningPoint desktop shortcut if you wish.