This is the Google version of PowerPoint, but better, because you can invite people to join in and work on it with you. You can also use it in conjunction with Hangouts on Air (or other programs that allow you to share your screen) to record a live presentation! While you speak, you can share your slideshow with your audience! A very useful tip is to use the speaker's notes section at the bottom of each slide. When you present, you can read those notes while the audience watches the slideshow - they don't have to know you are looking at notes! With Hangouts on Air, the presentation automatically saves to YouTube, so you are ready to educate and inspire the world!
Here's my Google Presentation:
This was just an experiment, but it's good because now I know that I need a new webcam and microphone! The slideshow done on Google Slides came out awesome and I really enjoyed learning how to do this. Hangouts on Air, however, was a bit more challenging and I wasn't happy with the results. It seems very limiting, but perhaps I just need more practice. Overall, I know how important presentations are in our world where information is at our fingertips! So, I will continue to practice these skills and works toward more professional presentations in the future.
According to Google, creativity is the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.
Creativity. Something I am all too familiar with. It can be a blessing and it can be a curse! Sometimes it is difficult to be a creative person in this society where creativity isn't always considered important, or at least not as important as academics. People who are highly creative are often considered weird, "out there", not intelligent, or even crazy! But what exactly is creativity? Why is it important? And most importantly, why should our society embrace creativity as a type of valuable intelligence?
In Sir Ken Robinson's Ted Talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?", he claims that we are all born creative but that it is unlearned over time as schools reject our creativity in order to form what they feel is an "intelligent" human being. He claims that the most academically intelligent people, such as professors, don't pay attention to their bodies, but instead think of their bodies as a tool to carry their slightly-left-leaning-brains around in. Makes sense.
Why would the establishment try to stop creativity? Because they don't view the arts as important. But the arts are what make the world go around. Therefore, this way of thinking about education needs to be overturned. Time for the creatives to fight back and prove that the arts are valuable, exciting, moving and needed.
One type of creative art, photography, can literally spark a revolution! We've seen this in history time and time again. Take a look at The Big Picture website to see beautiful collections of powerful photographs in all types of categories. I really enjoyed the one of Scott Kelly's Year In Space. Many of the images don't even look like something you'd think about seeing in space. They look like oil paintings. The vibrant colors, the shapes, the design of our universe is mind-boggling! These images tell a beautiful story. They are art, but they are also science, they are also spirituality, they are also a key to unlocking curiosity and they inspire the pursuit of new things! I loved this website! I've been working on a photography project in my community involving powerful images that describe where I live. Here's some I'm starting with.
These days if someone wants to get into the art of photography, they really need to understand how to promote their work online. Appropriate photo size and resolution is the first step toward achieving this. All photo editor programs have the ability to resize the image and change the resolution. For example, Pixlr you can click on "Image", "image size", and then change the size - also known as dpi (dots per inch). You want to edit an image size so that it is similar to where you are trying to use it. If it is a website, it doesn't need to be too large. If it is to be printed as a billboard, you will need a lot of pixels!
Then, when you save it, you can lower the quality (resolution) if you didn't want a large image or file. If you lower it too much, it will become blurry. If you make it too large, it will make your website run slow.
Once you have a lot of great images and want to share your craft with the world, what do you do? One pretty cool way that I just learned about how to do, is right through Youtube! The easiest way to do this, I discovered, is by uploading your photos to Google Photos - or, maybe they are already there if you use your camera phone and have your images automatically backed up. You can go through them and create a specific album just for your photo slideshow. From there you can easily link them into your Youtube Photo Slideshow. Here's one I did just for fun!
This method also enabled me to add music, which was so easy and I found the song I wanted right away by searching for "farm" since that's the theme of my video. It fits perfectly! My video is creative because I used colorful images that fit into a nature theme. Some are landscape, while others are macro (up close). I ordered my images to tell a story of the seasons - starting with winter, going into spring, summer, then a little fall, and ending again in winter. And so, the cycle continues!
This week I explored all the basics of the online audio/visual world! You really don't need much to get started on becoming a YouTube star or recording your own music/songs, etc. In reality it can all be done from a smartphone these days! That's not to say it will be the highest quality, but it is a start. And, hey, if you are just doing it for fun... it is definitely a ton of fun! Here's some tips to get you started...
Music
Music matters - You must have music in the background of your videos to add excitement and emotion, unless of course your videos are of you making music! Soft beats or suspenseful instrumentals, music really makes a difference in what people feel when they watch a video. Here's some places to get free music:
Free Music Archive (large variety if you can't find what you want in the previous spot)
Archive.org Audio (music, photos, videos and more for free download here - I found the website difficult to navigate, however)
Video
YouTube is "the place" to be. I easily set up my account using my Google log in, personalized it with a profile and timeline picture, description, etc. Now I have my own YouTube channel! Soon I'll be a star ;-) Some perks of using Youtube:
YouTube also has built in editing. You can upload your video, and then cut it, add music, change the coloring, alter the speed, you can even merge multiple videos together!
YouTube is a great place to upload personal videos for safekeeping. Videos can be set to either public, private, or unlisted (must have the link to view it).
You can go back and edit, organize or share videos at any time!
You can make money by monetizing your account (in your settings). Basically this ensures that your videos will have tons of ads. You get paid each time someone clicks on one of those ads.
However, you might not want ads on your videos (who likes ads?!), so you can also go into your settings under "video manager" and turn ALL ads off.
Audio Recording
In the event that you are a musician, or a poet, or want to record any type of sound, there are free online programs for that! Audacity is one that I've used for years. You can download for free onto your computer and mix tracks, record instrumentals or voice if you have a microphone, import MP3s and more. Sountrap is similar but I like it more! I was able to set up my account quickly and easily without any downloading to my computer! It comes with a comprehensive library of tracks to use for free! This was fun! It also has built in instruments like a keyboard and drums that you can use to make your own music (if you are musical... I am not!). I was able to mix a recording of myself reading a poem with some background music. Not cheesy sounding, either! Bonus!
So, really there's no reason why everyone with a smartphone or more can't go have fun creating audio/visual web content! Enjoy :-)
