Hello everyone!
Thing 5 is about online presentation sharing. Cool! I have never used Slideshare before; actually, I was unaware of its existence. Normally, when sharing presentations, I go with the Google Docs, to which you can upload files to the cloud ::ooooh, the cloud::: and send/share accordingly. This is equally excellent, though different, and much more share-friendly.
While I was bopping around on Slideshare, I found a wonderful presentation on Web 2.0 use in archives. Really great. It's by Arian Ravanbakhsh and Kate Theimer (who a mentor and the content writer for 23 Things!), and it has all sorts of links to examples of real use of the technologies addressed. This presentation discusses ArchivesBlogs, which I actually touched on in my Thing 4 entry, and it also has the same video about Web 2.0 that is included in 23 Things for Archivists' Thing 3 (also written by Kate Theimer). That was fun. I feel like I just unwrapped a little archivists puzzle. I looked at 4 or 5 presentations though-- this was far, far, better than the others. For real.
So in my quest for SlideShare comprehension, I wondered if Slideshare was compatible with Prezi. I hate to say it, but I think PowerPoint might be dying. It's still very popular, and definitely a solid presentation format, but how many ::yawn yawn:: text-filled PowerPoint presentations have we all sat through? To get the most out of PowerPoint, you really have to start using a lot of features. They're there for sure, but, for the love of all things stimulating, please let's get away from the 20 bullet-point-only slides. Has anyone ever used Prezi? It's a great tool that is as quick and simple to use as PowerPoint, but far more visually stimulating. Below is a copy of a Prezi about gaming in libraries, created in 2010 by me, Andrea Cronin, Rebecca Thompson, and Molly Bruce. Check it out-- and see if you think it's more interesting than a PP, despite that the content is largely similar to what we could have placed in a Powerpoint.
Gaming in Libraries
That was a long caveat. Backtracking-- I was trying to upload this presentation to my new Slideshare account, because it's one of my favorites, but it wouldn't convert the Prezi. The conversion program just took out all the pictures we used and made them into their own slides. I found this hysterical yet educational, after my little rant about the PowerPoint decline. The moral of the story, kids, is that this site isn't yet equipped to jump past PowerPoint, really. It will upload videos, though! But, it cannot handle the in-betweens of a dynamic presentation of static materials.
I am going back in search of a PowerPoint. I have been using Prezi for some time but I know there must be a PP in my recent scholastic past, and I shalt track it down, so that I, too, can become a contributing member of Slideshare. There may be a Tangent 5.1 in the future.
I really hope that the Prezi actually embeds when I hit "Publish Post". Otherwise I'm just going to link out to it. That's almost as boring as a bulleted PowerPoint slide. Sigh.
...Nope, it didn't. I wonder if it's possible to embed something into one entry, without embedding it into my entire blog framework for the rest of its existence. That's something to investigate for the future.
Okay, that's it! Happy presenting, friends and archivists!
Bee
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