Those who’ve heard my thoughts on presentations in general (most are bad … including most of mine), you’ll also know I think Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen (the blog and the book) is the most insightful guide to contemporary presentation design currently available.  Thus, I was fascinated by Garr’s take on the differences between Barack Obama and John McCain’s national convention speeches and the graphic elements which accompanied them.  The short version: Obama presents like a deity, while McCain bombed in visual terms.  In terms of teaching presentation, though, Garr did mock-ups of how McCain’s talk would have looked in different styles which really get you thinking.  Here’s the difference between an MBA and Steve Jobs presenting so you can see what I mean (and why this would be useful when trying to get others to think through presentation in visual terms):

[Images all from Presentation Zen.]
[Cross-posted from Tama Leaver dot Net.]

As this graph shows, more than half US tweens and teens have discussed education in online social networking:

Likewise, many tweens and teens are not just discussing and downloading, but also creating, uploading and participating in creative projects:

Again we are reminded that education in the twenty-first century has to think about the digital literacies of students and how to allow those literacies to develop in our curricula.

Using a very simply interface, quick text annotations can be added to any flash-based videos, including those on YouTube, MySpace and Google Video. Check out an example here. The video quality isn’t stunning but for quick projects with minimal training and fuss, I think this could prove a very useful tool indeed!

[Via Jo]

Also of great interest given my podcasting inclinations was a talk by Colette Vogele and Elizabeth Townsend Gard entitled “Legal issues in podcasting the traditional classroom“. Their abstract:

Colette Vogele and Elizabeth Townsend Gard will explore the legal aspects of podcasting in teaching and higher education. Colette is the author of the new Podcasting Legal Guide (soon to be available at Creative Commons and the Center for Internet and Society) and Elizabeth focuses her research on copyright in an academic environment. Colette will explain legal basics surrounding podcasting, and Elizabeth will focus on the higher education environment, particularly podcasting the traditional classroom. The presentation will address copyright, trademark, and right of publicity/privacy questions that arise in the context of podcasting in the teaching scenario. Copyright questions have to do primarily with third-party materials that are used in the podcast, and the rights under which the podcasting teacher wishes to distribute her content. Traditional licensing, Creative Commons licensing, and public domain dedications would be addressed. Questions about ownership of the podcast content (e.g., the institution vs. the teacher?) would also be discussed. Elizabeth will focus the second part on “What questions should we ask when we podcast the traditional classroom?” This will look at at the specifics of Section 110 of the Copyright Act , which includes both exceptions to using copyrighted materials in the traditional face-to-face classroom teaching and the additional recent exceptions added with the TEACH Act. How does podcasting change classroom choices? What choices do podcasters have when podcasting the classroom? This part will also look at the additional issues of ownership of the podcasted lecture and student work that is podcasted.

You can download the entire presentation (with both .mov files and the powerpoint slides) and I recommend you do as the two offer a great primer on thinking through the legalities of podcasting in academia.

I suspect the entire Higher Ed Blog Con will end up being a fantastic resource for those thinking and blogs, podcasts, screencasts and the like and I’m looking forward to the rest of the papers.

Oh, and Lessig is also using this presentation as an experiment in ways of putting presentations together … I think it works admirably!

Update: Leon Felipe Sanchez has posted several smaller versions of Lessig’s presentation, including one optimised for the Video iPod and a much smaller download (for those on dialup, especially) of 320×240 (13.5 MB).

You might even be able to find me.