Workshop Advanced Beginner Powerpoint Excel Html Moodle Web Page Images Pictures Word Introduction to PowerPoint Advanced Powerpoint Introduction to Moodle Quiz Wiki Forum
Workshops & Training Offered
by Roger Kenner
Roger Kenner has a long history of giving training workshops. Providing training workshops to faculty and staff was one of his principle activities during his years at Concordia University. The Introduction to Powerpoint workshop, for example, has been given more than 100 times, beginning in 1996 with Powerpoint 4.0 and Windows 3.1.
The material for most of the workshop topics listed below can be adapted to large-group, small-group or individual presentations; in either 'hands on' or demonstration mode and for training sessions ranging from a couple of hours to several days. Some can also be expanded into a multi-week course.
Participants will become familiar with the basic operation of Powerpoint while at the same time receiving insights into the principles of making good presentations. Within the first hour, participants will have learned how to create standard slide shows, including the incorporation and management of images. They will then be shown how to use the Slide Master to customize the show to create their own look and how to harness the Outline Mode for more effective slide show preparation. Techniques will be shown for moving material back and forth between the Powerpoint slide show and a Word document, for the preparation of subsequent reports from the slide show and for creating slide shows from written reports. Basic slide transition and slide animation techniques are introduced. Delivery tips, such as the use of hidden slides to compress content or to vary it by audience, are illustrated. Finally, the inclusion of sound and video into the slide show will be demonstrated.
This material is conceived as a three-hour 'hands-on' presentation, with prepared materials, but can be adapted as a 'demonstration' if necessary. Participants do not need any previous knowledge of Powerpoint and all materials are included.
This workshop will explore ways to exploit some of the more advanced features of PowerPoint, in order to produce more sophisticated presentations. Various branching techniques will be demonstrated. These will allow participants to produce variable and customized slide shows, in which what comes up next depends on choices made by the user. Discussion will touch on topics such as: How Powerpoint can be used to produce stand-alone tutorials and product demonstrations; how Powerpoint can be linked to external programs in a number of different ways; different and complementary ways to integrate images, special effects, sound and video; various techniques to manipulate clip art in order to produce entirely new images and logos; and the use of custom animation tools for producing out-of-the-ordinary presentation effects or complex simulations.
This workshop is designed for those who already have a basic familiarity with PowerPoint. It can be delivered both as a 'demonstration' and as a 'hands-on' activity. It can all be presented all at once, in about three hours; over separate sessions, with interim practice tasks; or in individual components, customized for particular needs. A set of materials, in the form of example slide shows for analysis and study, are included.
Most know HTML (HyperText Markup Language) as the basic building block for Web pages. Few realise that it is also a powerful tool for managing large sets of inter-related documents or for documents containing large numbers of images (a family album on CD-ROM or DVD, for example). Today's computer applications insulate the writer from the underlying HTML most of the time. At first glance, the code can seem frightening, but it is actually fairly simple and easy to learn. Knowing how to read and tinker with HTML code is akin to being able to open the hood of a car, whether to simply check the oil or to perform major surgery.
In this 'hands-on' workshop, participants will learn the basics of HTML by building up a new document entirely from scratch using only a simple text editor and a web browser. Participants will learn to use simple text formatting controls, to insert and control images, to make internal and external links, to set up lists, to use lists as a document organizer and to create simple tables. Style sheets, for advanced formatting, will also be introduced. Particiants will learn to understand and modify the HTML produced by common office software. Some of the more modern flavours of HTML, also found on the web, will be discussed.
This workshop is conceived as a 'hands-on' activity lasting anywhere from three to six hours. It ccan also be delivered in several shorter sessions, with interim projects. While Web access is an advantage, it is not required for most of the features of this presentation. A set of tutorial materials accompanies this workshop.
There is nothing like an image to make a demonstration clear! This seminar looks at the various ways to gather images, to manipulate and prepare them, and to include them in Web pages or documents created with various office tools such as Word, Powerpoint or Excel. Depending on the source (digital cameras, scanners, the computer screen or the Web) and the desired final use, images may need to be re-sized, re-sampled, cropped and otherwise manipulated. In this workshop, participants will learn these techniques in order to use images to their best advantage.
This workshop is conceived as a small group, 'hands-on' activity lasting anywhere from one to two days. It can also be delivered in several shorter sessions, with interim projects.
While there are many advanced features of Excel, few understand its great power in manipulating small and medium-sized databases. Excel serves as a great tool for working with data. Even in cases where a database tool such as Access is the ultimate goal, Excel serves as an excellent preview tool, allowing one to explore, on the fly, those fields needed to produce the desired reports and then to clean up the data before adding it to the database. The following features will be covered: The sort, text-to-column, and paste as values tools; their combination with simple formulas to clear duplicates, regularize fields, split and combine fields and match two sets of data on a common field. The participants will also be introduced to the power of Excel's text-import wizard for parsing data contained in word-processor or Web files and the use of Word's MailMerge tool, as a report generator for the data collected in Excel.
This workshop is conceived as a 'hands-on' activity lasting around three hours, but could also be presented as a demonstration. Participation in this workshop requires a working knowledge of the basics of Excel, as well as some experience in using Excel.
Moodle is an open-source, freely-available Learning Management System. Software of this type is used to present tutorials, courses and other learning experiences on-line to a closed and controlled group of learners. Moodle is one of the easiest-to-learn and most popular of these packages. It has been adopted by many of the colleges and universities in Quebec, as well as by 30,000 other institutions world-wide. Moodle also has great potential for corporate training. It is a low-cost, yet powerfully effective solution.
The introductory workshop presents the most popular features available with Moodle and provides step-by-step instruction on getting started with the basics: Setting up the home page for the course or tutorial, posting training documents, enabling forums for on-line discussion among the learners and with the instructor, and giving individual feedback in a confidential manner. In addition to the technical aspects of working with Moodle, many elements of instructional design will also be introduced. At the end of the workshop, participants will have a ready-to-use web site.
This workshop is conceived as a 'hands-on' activity lasting around three hours. For those not otherwise having access to Moodle, access to Moodle can be provided.
Roger Kenner has been a teacher-trainer, specializing in the application of technology to teaching, for over twenty years, and has taught in teacher-preparation programmes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at university.
For those who already have experience working with Moodle or who have already taken Introduction to Moodle (See above), various advanced modules are available to meet your needs.
Each of these workshops are small-group, hands-on experiences, for which special, individual Moodle sites will be created in advance. Where the required access to a Moodle server cannot otherwise be arranged, particpants can use the Moodle server of Rk-Idées.
This workshop features the grade book tool within Moodle. It permits teachers/trainers to give private feedback and grades for each task to each learner and to easily keep track of the grades/progress of all the learners. All features of both the simple and advanced grade book will be introduced. The various ways in which columns (new grades) can be added to the grade book will be discussed. Those taking the workshop will experience of both the learner and the teacher points-of-view.
Moodle includes a sophisticated tool for delivering quizzes and tests to learners. Learners can take tests on-line, at their own convenience, and the results can be evaluated automatically. It can be a great boon for those who either have a large number of learners or who do not have a venue for bringing learners together to take an exam. The process involves two steps: Adding questions to a question bank, and then creating individual quizzes or tests based on these questions. Various question types are supported: Multiple-choice, true/false, short answer, numerical, calculated and essay. All but the essay-question type are self-marking. Questions can be prepared on line, off-line using a word processor or uploaded from various commercial sources. Features such as random selection of questions, setting time limits and having quizzes open and close at specific times will be discussed.
Participants will experience quizzes both as learner and as teacher. They will prepare quizzes, take them, and then review the results. Besides the mechanics of creating Moodle quizzes, insights will be given on how to best take advantage of the testing process and how to create effective test questions.
Typically, only the teacher or trainer and their designated assistants can post material onto a Moodle site. It may be desirable for learners to post their own work, either for the teacher alone or for all the other members of the group to see. Moodle offers a number of tools by which learners can post their own work, including discussion forums, user-built glossaries, group or individual wikis and Blogs.
Each of the various tools will be introduced and participants will have the chance to experience them both as learner and as teacher. Appropriate use of each tool for various outcomes will be discussed. Finally, participants will create new forums, glossaries, wikis, and blogs.