minimax

minimax :: minimum effort - maximum impact

All too often, the use of computers ends up making more work not less. Is there a way to manage this powerful resource to get the maximum result with the minimum amount of effort? All too often what we get instead is maximax, maximum effort, maximum impact, or worse minimin, minimal effort, minimal impact. During this session I plan to share some ideas on how exactly to achieve minimax... how can we get the maximum result, with a minimal amount of time and effort.

Audience: Anyone who has ever spent hours creating a resource they only used once... maybe twice.

Strand: Digital (and Information) Literacy, ICT, IT, Computer Technology... any more?

Session Focus:

• Demonstration of how to utilise shock wave files 'swf' (flash) files. Find a site with good flash content, and learn how to extract it from the page and run it on its own... any school can build a library of this kind of media. (Samples attached)
• Unlocking Adobe Acrobat: Making the most of the scanning to PDF using copiers, how to edit scanned documents, crop, rotate, extract, tidy up etc. How to turn a scanned document, like pages from a book, into a document with selectable text. How to easily annotated over scanned material in front of the class with the IWB... without using the IWB software.
• How to easily extract youtube videos to build a video library.
• How to utilise existing interactive web content for use seperate use with an IWB that can also be used easily on any standalone computer for 1:1 use, or to use for homework.

Useful info :: (links will open in a new window)

A site for downloading youtube videos (and others)

http://www.splandoo.com/

Dropbox Public link to download a 'starter pack' of 'swf' files.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/981876/swf.zip [60MB]

You will need a Flash player to play swf files. It is highly likely that you already have a flash player on your computer, (most 'rich media' web content uses swfs) but you can download a free standalone Flash player (projector) here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

Dropbox is a really useful web tool, think of it as a free 2GB thumb drive, on the web. If you use this link to get one for yourself, we both get extra free space.

http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTk4MTg3Njk

Make your own Prezi

http://prezi.com/

VLC Player - It plays everything.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Feel free to add your own minimax tips here, as and when you come across them. try and keep them cross platform (relevant to PC and Mac users) as far as possible...

Seán McHugh - smc@uwcsea.edu.sg