Steve Martin of Ripple Training, on Ken Stone’s site: Managing Your FCP X Events & Projects using Disk Images. This looks like an excellent workflow. Haven’t upgraded/downgraded/sidegraded to FCPX yet, but I know I will, and this will make working with it so much easier. A real find.

Though the title of Lifehacker’s post is tasteless, it gets to the point: that too many presentations fail to have the impact they should. Too many teachers and professors, people who are professional communicators speaking to groups, do so not very well. The post covers five key problems and offers solutions for them:

1. Too Many Ideas on One Slide


2. Clichés and Clipart


3. Lack of Emphasis


4. Random Design Choices


5. No Relationship to the Audience

So read up on how to reduce the suckage in your presentations!
How to Create Presentations that Don’t Suck – Lifehacker.

Is this a great sentence or what?

Good narrative is the essential tool in a world drowning in data points and content.

It’s the most succinct way of thinking about everything web that I’ve come across. I am stymied by the implied responsibility of having a blog (two, actually), a Twitter account, a Facebook account, a Flickr account, a Posterous account, and on and on. But I should know, and remember, that almost all of life is about how humans try to understand by imposing a story on what happens to us, and making stories out of our lives.

Tell your story.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog points to the iMuscle iPad app, saying it’s a “must for exercise aficionados.”

With iMuscle, users can select virtually any muscle in the human body and see a list of exercises and stretches for that muscle. However, that feature in itself is nothing new or groundbreaking as many apps do the same thing. What is unique about this app is that it uses the 3D Nova engine to show users animations of the exercises using a model with exposed musculature. Think Body Worlds brought to life.

In addition to more than 450 high-quality 3D animated exercises and stretches, you can create custom workouts and the app even supports multiple users. Anyone who is into sports training or rehabilitation science will immediately see the usefulness of this app. After all, instead of telling a client they need to work on their butt muscles, it’s a lot more helpful to tell them that they specifically need to work their glute med and be able to show them a 3D model of its anatomical location and what it looks like in action.

I haven’t used it; I’m only pointing to the article, but I would guess that the folks in our Kinesiology and Health department might find this of interest.

There is at least one presentation from this gathering I’ll be following up on:

Using mobile and social media for research and teaching
John Gallaugher, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Information Systems, The Carroll School of Management, Boston College

Full of good ideas for using mobile and social media to foster more involvement with students, including a class wiki from day one, a hall of fame for best student work accessible to students as examples of successful work, submitting questions and answers for exams so they can guide and raise the bar for each other. Very stimulating and provocative, and it’s implemented and successful already.

A big issue, though: as a previous presenter said, and as any reading educator will tell you, competence, much less expertise, requires regular practice. For more faculty to adopt and implement these practices will require time, and that time must be allowed and encouraged by chairs, deans, provosts, and other administrators.

The details of this mini-conference are at MacLearning.org. More good things to come, because they’re going to post video and supporting materials there within a couple of weeks. Good.

Updated below.

Lots of questions remain, but things are gonna change. Among the biggest news: Mac App Store only, at $299. I wonder what the education pricing will be.

Eric Reagan of Photography Bay blogged it live, and has some follow up in the comments, so scan them all.

Macworld has an initial report.

A first response from Scott Simmons at Pro Video Coalition.

Even more reflections, which I believe to be informed opinion, from highly regarded FCP trainer Larry Jordan and from Philip Hodgetts, another trainer and industry observer.

Both Jordan and Hodgetts were among the group that saw the preliminary demo in February, with comments embargoed by NDAs. They’ve both built their businesses and reputations on deep knowledge of the industry and Apple and FCP’s place in it. They’re not wild-eyed boosters, in other words. Interesting, interesting.

UPDATE: More from Larry Jordan here, in his post The Sound of 1,700 Jaws Dropping. He also includes a massive screenshot of this screen from FCPX. Click on this thumbnail to see the large view:

[Image courtesy Apple Inc. Click for enlarged view.]

Pocket-Lint.com reports: Cisco kills Flip Video – Pocket-lint.

“Stopping the business rather than selling it was the best course of action,” Cisco’s global head of public relations exclusively told Pocket-lint on Tuesday, in response to our query on why the sudden decision.

In the dramatic move, the company will cease all production of Flip Video products globally, but has said that it will support the company’s FlipShare service for existing customers, while it formulates a “transition plan.”

“We are making key, targeted moves as we align operations in support of our network-centric platform strategy,” said John Chambers, Cisco chairman and CEO. “As we move forward, our consumer efforts will focus on how we help our enterprise and service provider customers optimize and expand their offerings for consumers, and help ensure the network’s ability to deliver on those offerings.”

Well isn’t this interesting? A presenter can mirror the iPad screen wirelessly – what could teachers do with this? Very impressive, and apparently they spent only about $150.

Teachers and corporate presenters alike begged Apple for video mirroring capabilities for the iPad, and the company delivered the feature in the iPad 2. Apple’s solution still leaves users tied to a cord, however, so two employees at networking service provider Straight Up Technologies developed a simple hack to give their client wireless HDMI output and freedom of movement while sharing the iPad’s screen.

via iPad wireless HD mirroring hack makes for better presentations.

Teacher Layoffs Cause Concern Over Turmoil in Schools – NYTimes.com.

But school superintendents say the consequences of sweeping layoffs are often overlooked in the policy debate. Layoffs, they say, hurt school cohesion, undermine student achievement and rupture ties with parents.“I’m getting nauseous just remembering,” said Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who as the Cleveland superintendent in the last decade had to make draconian teacher cuts. “The result was devastating for our classrooms.”