DROPBOX
The worst thing that can happen to you while evolving into a techno savvy teacher is to have your trusty laptop inexplicably get sick leaving you with all your hard work erased! An educator's worst nightmare.
You can use Google DOCS and various hard drives to back-up your work but there is a learning curve, time investment and monetary investment.
DROPBOX is the easiest FREE way to constantly back-up your data and furthermore streamline your life. Essentially, it acts like any file folder on your computer. Instead of saving my work in the My Documents folder, I now save all documents, PowerPoint's, spreadsheets and photos directly to my DROPBOX.
It's too often a company laptop in my office will start acting sickly and even CCleaner won't bring it back from the brink. The frequent solution from our IT department is to wipe the whole computer and start it from scratch. It breaks the hearts of many who lose precious lesson plans and other work.
When it was finally my turn to get a sickly computer needing a deep cleaning, our IT guy was stunned when I smiled and said "go ahead and just wipe it".
"Are you sure?" he asked so puzzled and astonished.
"Yeah, I got everything on DROPBOX so I'm not losing anything."
I could go on and talk about never having to carry a laptop to and from home or the flexibility of sharing files, but DROPBOX has a great website with videos for that stuff.
6.06.2011
How to Prepare for a Presentation
How to Prepare for a Presentation
Does anybody really want to stand up in front of large groups and perform? In hindsight, I wish we had done more presentations for class projects in school. Having more experience presenting in different settings could eliminate the amount of anxiety I get the day before, the hour before, going on stage. But I try and take every opportunity to do it. It's not like being in the classroom. I used to get sick anxiety before every class.
Students are unpredictable and high schoolers are especially moody. It's not entirely their fault. It's science! When I would get frustrated with a group of students I try to remember how imperfect I was in high school. I wasn't really interested in proper headings on essays or focusing on lectures either. Regardless, it took about three years getting up in front of a large group of students for me to finally be confident enough to walk into any strange classroom and take over. Adults are a more difficult sell. Teachers are even worse.
I'm no exception. I loathe sitting still and listening to anyone talk! I'm more accustomed to being the center of attention as any teacher would be. Tomorrow I'll be presenting a mediocre sliver of information (6 power point slide) and I'm still teeter-tottering between anxiety and confidence. Luckily, I spent the day preparing.
Preparing through the day for tomorrow's presentation:
Does anybody really want to stand up in front of large groups and perform? In hindsight, I wish we had done more presentations for class projects in school. Having more experience presenting in different settings could eliminate the amount of anxiety I get the day before, the hour before, going on stage. But I try and take every opportunity to do it. It's not like being in the classroom. I used to get sick anxiety before every class.
Students are unpredictable and high schoolers are especially moody. It's not entirely their fault. It's science! When I would get frustrated with a group of students I try to remember how imperfect I was in high school. I wasn't really interested in proper headings on essays or focusing on lectures either. Regardless, it took about three years getting up in front of a large group of students for me to finally be confident enough to walk into any strange classroom and take over. Adults are a more difficult sell. Teachers are even worse.
I'm no exception. I loathe sitting still and listening to anyone talk! I'm more accustomed to being the center of attention as any teacher would be. Tomorrow I'll be presenting a mediocre sliver of information (6 power point slide) and I'm still teeter-tottering between anxiety and confidence. Luckily, I spent the day preparing.
Preparing through the day for tomorrow's presentation:
- Woken by cat at 8 AM
- Sat on couch reviewing slides on iPad while watching Salt
- Half-way through Salt started typing notes on opening slide
- Continued typing notes on opening slide while watching E3 game trailers on Hulu
- Continued typing notes on opening slide while watching The Other Guys
- Had anxiety attack
- Cleaned cat box
- Pulled out laptop in the kitchen
- Got hungry for lunch and ate a box of Cinnamon Toaster Struddel
- Decided it would be a good idea to watch some professional speakers and used Netflix to watch Kevin Smith's Too Fat for 40
- Had a sugar crash and fell asleep during Kevin Smith's Too Fat for 40
- Did laundry
- Tried recording myself talking from memory
- Shortened notes
- Wrote bullet points on hand
- Played BlackOps
- Rewrote bullet points on hand because they rubbed off from sweaty BlackOps palms
- Forced to stop playing because of hungry cats
- Did more laundry
- Cleaned cat box again
- Cooked a real dinner to negate the effects of the sugar
- Pulled out ironing board and clothes to iron for tomorrow
- Watched Family Guy reruns and practiced in-between commercial breaks.
- Still haven't iron clothes
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