Continuous formation

One of the neatest things to come along in a long while has been Presenter Coach, an AI app inside of PowerPoint.  It tries to give you helpful feedback on your presenting skills based on your own PowerPoint and the words, phrasing and elocution you use. First... make your PowerPoint.  You can make it in Desktop PowerPoint, iPad PowerPoint, Mac PowerPoint or Online PowerPoint (or whatever version of PowerPoint you have!) but to access Presenter Coach, you need to use PowerPoint Online (which is free and tied in to your Office365 or Hotmail/Outlook accounts). Store your PowerPoint in your OneDrive -- this is the important part -- and then visit http://office.com and click on PowerPoint. You're now in PowerPoint Online! It gives you the opportunity to make a new PowerPoint and shows you all the PowerPoints you have been working on recently (including those shared with you).  Click on the one you want to practice and it will open in a new browser window. You...

In preparation for my next blog post (I'm blogging once-a-day in November!) we should talk about who you are .  In today's cloud-based services, you need an identity.  It's typically based on your email or your phone number.  One option is your Microsoft Identity . Most folks already have a Google, Facebook or Twitter identity... and this is the same idea.  Having a personal Microsoft Account does not mean you have to get another email or really do anything except register to get your Microsoft "space" and allows you to use cloud-based services like Word, PowerPoint, Excel & OneNote. If you don't already have a Microsoft Account, attach it to one of your existing emails.  If you're okay with it, I would recommend creating a new email through this process (even with the same name @ outlook.com) but I've also just attached it to my gmail account. Do NOT use your School email.  It will work and you could do it, but then you can't tell just by l...

At Appleby College, we've been using Microsoft OneNote for a l.o.n.g time now ... and structured shared OneNote Binders for two full academic years now.  Folks often ask how much time it takes for teachers to get accustomed to working with OneNote and shared documents in general.  Since we have the advantage of a 1:1 tablet program and a background with the software, it's hard to be fair when describing how long it takes for teachers to become comfortable enough to use it in the classroom in front of students and to bend it to their pedagogical and administrative needs. Well, we started using OneNote last week at the Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI) to help with professional development creation.  Of the 50 or so participants, only a handful had used it before and for the vast majority it was brand new to them.  So far, they've spent 8 hours using OneNote and shared collaborative Word documents & PowerPoint presentations through OneDrive and the WebA...