Category: Teaching

  • Effective methods to engage students in the classroom.

    I’m doing a presentation at Huddersfield University soon and this is my PowerPoint. The presentation is about the importance of motivating and inspiring your students with engaging activities in the classroom. It’s also about using feedback a teacher obtains from students and saving it in a digital format so students can use it outside the…

  • What the Olympics can teach all of us

    With the spectacle of the Olympics over and the Olympic athletes returning to their home towns and civic receptions we are all having to get used to life without the likes of Usain Bolt on our television screens. Despite some reservations about the cost of the games there is no doubt that Britain made them…

  • Pushing the boundaries in business and education.

    For companies, organisations and retailers one of the biggest challenges they face is establishing themselves in the online market place. This involves much thought and planning to implement a strategy that works and is going to be competitive. Being online is far more than having a website and putting some products in a database and…

  • Online universities are just around the corner

    Following on from my recent article about online education there was an interesting news article on the BBC website today which you can read here which is about the news that Edinburgh University is to be the first UK institution to join an influential US-based online university project. Many US universities are now providing online courses which have…

  • PowerPoint vs Prezi – Which is best for teaching?

    As part of my teaching of travel and tourism classes I have got to give presentations. I use PowerPoint but have lately been using Prezi. I think both PowerPoint and Prezi are excellent but I have become a big Prezi fan because I think it is more professional and is better at engaging an audience…

  • Higher education on the verge of a revolution?

    Let’s start with a bold statement ! – Teaching, at the further and higher education level, is on the verge of such a huge change in the way it is delivered that in 5 years time we won’t recognise the educational lanscape. Teachers has been slow to grasp the importance of technology and have relied on…

  • Kids should code

    There has been lots of publicity about kids being able to code. When I was at school we had binary computers. There was no such thing as a desk top PC. I remember going on a school trip to Burtons Head Office in Leeds in the 70’s and they had an air-conditioned room full of…

  • Bored of listening to music? Listen to TED!

    Quite a while ago I discovered TED. No, this is not some strange man that I found in a remote place! TED stands for Technolgy Entertainment and Design.The BBC in an article today describes TED as a cult. I wouldn’t quite go that far but there is no doubt that since videos of TED talks…

  • Shocking state of 80% of school leavers in Scotland.

    Shocking news in The Scotsman newspaper today about an employer who says that 80% of young people in Scotland are unemployable. Being involved in both business and further education myself I was both interested to read this story and it left me wondering whether the same could be said of young people in the rest…

  • I must go to college chant the Chinese !

    Pisa tests – the Programme for International Student Assessment have just released their latest league tables for the best educated students and it comes as no surprise to me that the Chinese are well out in front of both the USA and Europe. Barack Obama said that the nation which “out-educates us today will out-compete…

  • Using free video clips in Movie Maker for teaching.

    {EAV:57ed9465b5a6b8a3} Following on from my blog article about how to make a simple You Tube video I have made another video from PowerPoint slides which I think is an improvement on the first one. These videos were made using PowerPoint slides and then saving them as JPEG’s and importing them into Movie Maker. The good thing…

  • How to make a simple You Tube video

    There are several ways to make a You Tube video. You can use a video camera or webcam to film yourself, you can use screen capture software or you can use PowerPoint slides. The video you see below was made using PowerPoint slides and here is how I did it. 1. Produce your slides in…