Nailing It With PowerPoint

Yes, a lot of us have a true love/hate relationship with Microsoft PowerPoint, but we also have thousands of slideshows (PowerPoint, Google Slides, etc.) deployed to our students. If you're going to use PowerPoint, you might as well do it right. And with that in mind, I'd like to share a great blog post on that very topic. Enjoy!

Publishing a Slideshow Presentation in Moodle

So you want to publish your awesome PowerPoint or Keynote presentation in your Moodle course? Guess what concept gave birth to Google Apps for Education here at Linn-Benton Community College? This one!

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We handle publishing of Google Docs and Google Presentations in Moodle courses differently. We publish Docs by linking to them (see how here), and Presentations by embedding them in a Moodle page within your course shell. Here's the step-by-step:

1. Open your Moodle course in one browser tab, and Google Drive in another tab.

2. If you already have the presentation you wish to publish in your Google Drive, skip to step #4; otherwise, click the red "Upload" button, and browse for the file you need:

3. Make sure conversion is turned on (note: see how to set your Google Drive conversion settings here):

4. When you are in the editing interface for your Google Presentation, click File > Publish to the Web…

5. You will have a couple of confirmations to click through. Start publishing:

Are you sure (yes, of course I'm sure!):

6. You will get a dialog box that lets you configure the size of the presentation you are about to embed in your Moodle course. Choose "Small" presentation size, so that users on small monitors (think netbooks, etc.) won't have to scroll left and right to view your presentation. They can always choose to view it full screen:

7. Click in the "Embed code" field and copy it to the clipboard:

8. Now go to your Moodle course (that other browser tab), and make sure editing is turned on:

9. Click the "Add an Activity or resource" link in the content block where you want the link to appear (of course, you can always move it later):

10. Select "Page" near the bottom of the left pane:

11. Input in the "Name" and "Description" fields:

12. You may need to click the Toolbar Toggle…

… to get the "Edit HTML source" button visible to click:

13. This makes the HTML source editor dialog box appear. Paste the HTML from the Google Presentation (from step #7 above) into the input box, and click the "Update" button:

14. Click either the "Save and Return to Course" or "Save and Display" button at the bottom.

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That's all there is to it. You don't need to redo the above steps if and when you want to edit your presentation; just access it in Google Drive and you're done - it's published and embedded in Moodle (and elsewhere, if you choose), so it's a live document to which your students will have one-click access, without needing anything more than a modern web browser. Cool, huh?

Comment below, and MOODLE ON.

Don't Use PowerPoint!

From Eight Things You Can Do To Improve the Quality of Your eLearning by Mark Lassoff of LearnToProgram.TV

Don’t Use Powerpoint- For the love of God! No Powerpoint– or at least no abusive Powerpoint. Your audience can read. Showing a Powerpoint and reading it to them is not effective eLearning. It’s a crutch for people who don’t know what they’re doing.”They saw the Powerpoint– They’re trained,” is an all too common thought process in eLearning. Powerpoint is no different from any other written medium. You might as well hand them photocopies of your presentation written in Word. Powerpoint is easier for the eLearning Developer because (a) They don’t have to have much skill to use it and (b) It’s quick. Don’t be lazy. Don’t use Powerpoint. It’s simply not effective.