We are approaching the end of yet another semester – time to wrap up any loose ends. If you use SPARK, here are some reminders to help you out.
Author: Michele Turre
Do you Pecha Kucha?
Imagine if you had to teach your class in 6 minutes and 40 seconds, using 20 PowerPoint slides, each displayed for 20 seconds. Well, these are the rules for Pecha Kucha, “chatter” in Japanese, competitions being held worldwide. Even if you aren’t going to use this method in your class, going through the process of…
Discounts on Adobe Software for Faculty
For a limited time, UMass Amherst faculty and staff can purchase Adobe software for personal use at a significant discount through the Adobe Select program. The program is usually only open to students and includes software such as Adobe Acrobat Professional and Adobe Creative Suite. Please excuse the sales-speak, but place your orders quickly! This offer…
A Different Kind of Presentation Tool
We’ve all seen (or at least heard of) a number of online communication and collaboration tools that have recently become popular: podcasting, wikis, blogs. . . . Some are good for distributing audio, while others lend themselves to displaying text or images. However, there seems to be a distinct lack of tools that can combine…
Google Announces New Tools, Programs
Google has been busy lately releasing tools and programs that we thought might be of use to instructors at UMass. We’ve listed three of these below, but more of Google’s new products (most are prototypes) can be found by visiting Google Labs. Google Docs (now for presentations) Google’s answer to PowerPoint has arrived. Google recently…
TIP: Getting Started in SPARK
Here are some suggestions to make getting started in SPARK a little easier: If you plan to upload Word documents We strongly recommend converting any Word documents to PDF or html format prior to uploading them into SPARK. Files in PDF or html format will display in the student’s browser, while files in Word format…