Slideshare
Slideshare exposes learners to other perspectives and multiple problem solving strategies. Activities encourage higher level thinking skills by evaluating presentations for content and design elements and Web accessibility.
One of the activities in this unit is to define and illustrate problem solving strategies. Learner chooses a problem and designs a slideshow showcasing a creative solution to the problem. The slideshow is shared with other learners through Slideshare. This exercise will expose learners to other viewpoints and gain multiple problem solving strategies.
Learning Objectives connected to the use of Slideshare:
· Viewing existing Slideshare presentations, learner will judge effective presentation design elements that correspond to Web accessibility standards provided by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). (Evaluation)
· Choosing one problem from pages 144-152 (or a problem of your choice), learner will integrate exemplary design elements and create a 12-18 slide creative solution PowerPoint presentation and publish to SlideShare in the format specified by instructor. (Synthesis)
Analysis of Assessment Tool
Slideshare is a collaborative tool to share PowerPoint presentations or pdf files on the Web. You can choose to share with the public or keep the presentation private. Learners or educators can search and download presentations by topic area. A musical background can be added or audio can be synchronized to the presentation. Completed presentations can be imbedded in blogs or on websites.
Why the tool is appropriate for the course
Slideshare is a tool that can be used for collaboration. Slideshare can also be used as a resource for researching subjects by topic. The software will be great hands-on practice for learners to create presentations in PowerPoint and practice importing files to Slideshare.
Benefits
The presentation is given a url address so if you can access the web you will always have access to the PowerPoint presentation. Slideshare interfaces with Facebook and allows for full functionality. When creating presentations, users can add tags to help with viewer searches.
Challenges
There is a comment feature but it does not have the feel of a blog comment feature. There are restrictions on file size and type and Slideshare currently does not support video. According to a May 7, 2008, article in TechCrunch.com, Slideshare has located funding to pursue embedding video into their program. I noted that I could not hear audio in some of the Slideshare presentations that I viewed.
Application
Slideshare can be used as a repository for comparing and researching effective presentation design. One entertaining application is to produce a Slideshare mashup called a Slidecast. According to the Academic Commons “A Slidecast synchronizes an uploaded PowerPoint presentation with an MP3 audio file (that must live somewhere else on the web). Slidecasts do not incorporate video of the presenter—compare with Zentation, a web-based mashup that does include presenter video—but Slideshare's embeddable results look very slick.”
Reference: http://www.academiccommons.org/library/slideshare-mashups
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
