Of Admin and Busyness

This week I have been mostly... doing admin work. Sucks, but it's gotta be done I guess. Still, Andy has had some very good meetings about the virtual stuff we are doing which is great! As well as the Sports Centre to develop we now have some shops with dragable display stands and we have also been asked to think about building a hotel with around 360 rooms! So plenty of things for me to do! Quiet exciting really. While all similar stuff, creating it all should be good, if not damn confusing!

Also have some busy weeks coming up before the end of term. I have some more Teaching of Presentations to do. After my post about Death by PowerPoint I think I'm going to revamp the presentation I used to show how to give presentations. Also have some meetings coming up about Blogging and the virtual stuff. So really looking forward to the next couple of weeks.

Andy and I are also looking at putting together a paper for a conference next year on eLearning. We are looking at, and will probably go with, a paper on virtual reality as thats basically what we are doing. However we can fit the paper under several different areas. So hopefully we will get accepted to go to that!

On a personal note I've just ordered one of those palm-size helicopters that are all the rage (oh the sheep I am) and also two nerf handguns. Yase, NERF! It's still around. They even have a sniper rifle now! So with any luck, once I've payed through the nose for Customs I will be able to shoot people at work. In a non-lethal manner of course. While distracting them with a small helicopter. Ha, Joy!

Of Birthdays and Joy

It was my birthday yesterday! Joyous! 21 now... which means I can do... er... nothing I couldn't do when I was 20...

Oh well. Had a really good meal with Claire, Rach and Vic last night though. Out around Blandford tomorrow night as well which should be a laugh.

Works pretty slow at the moment though. Mostly admin stuff with myBU units and staff. Boring and repetitive but I guess it's got to be done! Unfortunately I don't really have a lot to blog about. Erm... er... nope can't think of anything. Hopefully I'll have something to blog about next week. Something amazing and exciting. Ha... in Bournemouth Uni? I think not.

Of Death and PowerPoint

Death by PowerPoint

From: thecroaker, 3 months ago

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Fighting death by PowerPoint... How to make a presentation and not to bore your audience to death.


Link: SlideShare Link

As I have been doing presentations recently I thought I would link this. Found on Life Hacker. Makes some very, very good points. Infact I may use some of them to do my next presentation on FireFox. Yes, I have to do one on why the staff at Bournemouth Uni should be using FF instead of IE. Should be fun.

On a personal note, I've been playing three Star Trek games over the weekend. All old ones... mainly because my computer isn't good enough to run the newer ones haha. But Armada II, Elite Force and Bridge Commander are excellent. All completely different as well! Armada is an RTS (like C&C) and good fun. Blasting Borg and such like from the universe is always fun when you have the Enterprise on your side! Elite Force is a create FPS set in the Voyage time line. Again, against the Borg. Great fun running around with Seven of Nine, shame it's not Geri Ryan doing her voice though. All the other characters are the original actors voices though. And finally Bridge Commander. You are a captain, you tell everyone what to do. Fantastic! I've just been given the USS Sovereign (first of the Sovereign Class) which is an awesome ship hehehe. All in all, damn good games!

Of Hatred and Happiness

Well I've done this mornings session of teaching. Went really well. I really enjoyed doing it. Talked through how to give a good presentation then got them to create some little presentations and present them. Went well and I couldn't help smiling watching them do the presentations either. I could defiantly get used to being a teacher. I really really enjoyed doing it. I'm really glad I did those myBU inductions, it's given me a lot of confidence. It's no problem to stand up and talk in front of a class now.

On other things though, Claire's having some problems with her ex. He's being a dick. Normally I wouldn't post about this sort of thing, but it's annoying me. This is advice to all ex's, of either side. Don't play games. Once it's over, it's over. It doesn't help either side to mess around unless of course you deeply desire the attention even though you have another partner (like Neil). Feel like castrating him for what stress he's putting Claire through. But, what goes around comes around.

Of Learning and Teaching

Today I have been mainly preparing for some seminars tomorrow.

Andy and I have been asked to talk about using Powerpoint and Word as well as how to give good presentations. So today I've been creating a presentation on presentations entitled "The Presentation of all Presentations". It wasn't until I wrote it did I realise how it sounded. But hell, I'll roll with it. I think it's possibly one of the best presentations I've written. So perhaps it is the presentation of all presentations....?

Pretty much covers points and tips on how to do a good presentation. Stuff I should possibly follow myself. Here are my slide notes and key points:

Slide 1

• •Introduce who you are and where you are from is relevant
• •Give the tasty bits of your presentation
• •But not the structure, give that as you go
• •Tell them that they can either ask any questions during the presentation or to wait until afterwards

Slide 2

• •You are the presentation
• •Notes, slides and their contents just support materials
• •Try to keep to five bullet points or less
• •A picture is worth a thousand words (describe the front of the building – why not just use a pictures?)
• •Use hyperlinks to websites or other documents
• •Keep your notes simple, they are there to jog your memory not to read from
• •Keep it Simple Stupid

Slide 3

• •Rule of Three, find three main points for your presentation and create it around them
• •This creates the bulk of the presentation
• •Make sure you know what you are talking about so you don’t have to constant refer to notes
• •Make sure you know the majority of the audiences background, it lets you target them better

Slide 4

• •Try to stay relaxed
• •Humour goes a long way, tell a joke or a funny story relating to your subject
• •Don’t read your slides or your notes. They are only an aid
• •Don’t worry about any mistakes you make, never say sorry for them
• •Confidence is everything. Look like you know what you are doing and no one will question it

Slide 5

• •Speak slow, it gives the audience time to register what you are saying
• •Talk to individuals, it brings the audience into the presentation
• •Think about each section of the presentation
• •Take pauses, they let the audience digest your points

Slide 6

• •Use anything you can think of to get your point across. Short videos, props, anything
• •People tend to remember the last thing they are told over everything else. So end with something powerful
• •Read the audience, they will tell you when to move on to the next section
• •Always give reference to your research, etc

Slide 7

• •Thank your audience for listening
• •Ask for any questions

Yes yes, sound advice (in note form) for any who wants to give a presentation! Or maybe not, who knows? Either way it should be good. I just hope that my cough doesn't act up too much tomorrow (yes I'm still ill). As it still acts up when I'm talking. So it would be a huge shame if I can't do this tomorrow. Especially now that I've prepared an awesome presentation!

I've also got to get a presentation ready for some staff on Wednesday. Andy and I are talking about all our projects this year and he wants me to talk about my blog (hopefully I won't have any rude comments on here for them to read) and about mySC. So all that should be good.

Mentioning mySC reminds me I said I would show a screen of what she looks like now. Screens coming soon! I've also developed an office for it now. Just awaiting content. Still pondering if it's possible to have it built dynamically by the users. It might be possible, it might not. We shall see!

Which also reminds me to find that raster to vector changing site... found it! It may be useful...

The only other news I have for you is Andy has trimmed his beard. He does now and then. Otherwise he gets into trouble for pretending to be sandpaper. I will report on it's growth rate until he saws it off next.

Of Validation and Tiredness

Well I am pretty damn knackered at the moment. Had a bit of a rough weekend with being a bit ill. Had a few arguments with Claire (nothing new there then eh?). But otherwise life is going well.

Until today when I decided to validate the two webpages I've created for mySC recently. Oh deary me. The only thing that validated straight away was the CSS but then how can you really go wrong with that?

The HTML wasn't valid, it didn't conform to Section 508 or WAI which are both accessibility standards so I've spent all today getting the pages right. So it's now official. Apart from being lazy and breaking the code of conduct about not using tables for layout design these pages are perfect. The conform to XHTML 1.1 Transitional, OK so it isn't Strict but what does that matter? haha. And they conform perfectly to accessibility standards with tab indexing and all sorts. So if a blind and deaf and limbless person can't use the site it's not my fault because someone hasn't come up with the standards for me to follow...

On a side note, it's old but there is a great plugin for FireFox called Web Developer. Gives about a hundred different options to do with websites. It will validate the code for you, strip the CSS out if you want, everything. Absolutely fantastic! I should probably use the IE Tab plugin as well, would stop me from having another window open but do I really want to bastardise FF?