A common question asked when people are making major decisions is “What’s in it for me?” Jerry Weissman, in his book Presenting To Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, introduces WIFFY (an acronym for What’s In It For You). If we can play on the words, and insert the term “you” in the question, the focus shifts from ’me’ to the ’students’ you teach. You are still developing a presentation that will deliver the learning outcomes you anticipate, but asking the WIFFY question invites you to step into the shoes of a student and discern how the presentation will lead them to understand the concept you are presenting.

The WIFFY question has one major goal – to keep you focus on what is most important: persuading students to embrace a concept you are teaching. Therefore, every aspect of your presentation must point to the WIFFY. As you prepare your presentation, there are six questions you can ask about the presentation you are developing:

“This is important to you (the student) because… Why is this topic important? Why is it something students simply must learn (besides state-mandates telling you to teach it)?

“What does this mean to you?” How can you explain this concept in a clear, precise manner?

“Why am I telling you this?” Is it only because you’ve always included this segment? Develop a compelling argument on why this topic needs to be taught.

“Who cares?” Be wary of thinking students are going to automatically assume that what you have to present is of great value. Most likely, they could care less.

“So what?” What elements can you include that will make students sit up and take notice?

“And…”  Here’s the WIFFY… How can you get students to ‘buy’ into what you are teaching?

If you publish a blog for your classroom, you may want to create a page that provides guidelines on appropriate comments for your blog posts. Feel free to use this Blog Comment Etiquette with your classroom blog.

Here’s an easy solution from Jeff Giddens at http://segatech.us/archives/2283 for downloading YouTube videos so you can watch them on a computer without access to YouTube.

One of the things I do in my work is teach educators how to integrate multimedia resources into their instruction. Doing so often makes the learning process more engaging and understandable for pupils. I remind teachers that there are many reputable sources of educational material (for example, the video clips available at Annenberg’s Learner.org, the Library of Congress, TeacherTube, and Unitedstreaming). Sometimes, however, educators want to use instructional video from a site that cannot be accessed at school, a site like Youtube. We all know that, since the site is open to just about any and everyone, all manner of video material is present there–the shocking bad and the wonderfully good. That said, many clips on the site are perfectly safe and useful for instructional purposes.

So, what are educators to do when they want to use a Youtube video but can’t do so at school? There’s a simple way to address this problem. Be aware that the video will need to be downloaded at home or outside of school. This is a prudent move anyway, given that an “oops” experience at home is much easier to deal with than it would be in front of stunned students.

Step #1–Get Firefox.
Download and install Firefox. Yes, you can use Internet Explorer to download video but this tutorial isn’t taking that route. Firefox is a program that, like Internet Explorer, allows users to see web pages. It’s free and won’t mess up your PC. You’ll need Firefox to download videos as described here. You can get Firefox here if you need to download it–> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Step #2–Get Riva FLV player.
The videos you are downloading will probably be saved to your computer as an .flv video file. You’ll need an flv viewer ( a program that lets you watch .flv video files). Don’t worry there’s a great flv viewer called Riva FLV Player that’s free. You can get that program from this site:
http://tinyurl.com/22qzk5

Download and install Riva FLV player. It’ll be ready to play the videos you download when you begin downloading them. You also want to make sure that you have the .flv player installed on your machine at school

Step #3 Get DownloadHelper.
Download and install DownloadHelper. It’s an extension for Firefox that allows you to save videos from popular websites like Myspace, YouTube, Google, and others. Go to the site below and click on the green INSTALL NOW button.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

You’ll be prompted to restart Firefox. After doing that, the Downloadhelper icon will be visible in the upper right hand corner of your Firefox browser (near the Google search box). If everything was properly installed your browser may even take you the Downloadhelper website where you’ll see this message:

“You just installed DownloadHelper Firefox extension.”

Step #4 Give it a whirl.
Go to Youtube or another site where video is available. You should see that the Downloadhelper icon is animated. If you click on the the little arrow to the right of the Downloadhelper icon, it’ll show you the name of the video you’re about to download. Click on that name and a window will appear. You can rename the video if you wish to do so. After you’ve downloaded the file you should be able to play it.

Step #5 Enjoy!
Save the .flv file on a jumpdrive, take it to school, and watch it.

Will Richardson, best-known for expertise in educational technology and his blog www.weblog-ged.com, shared some great thoughts about the use of technology in an article titled The Secrets of their Success written by Victor Rivero (T.H.E. Journal, June 2006, p. 44). His argument that we may be asking the wrong question makes sense: “We should stop thinking and talking about technology and instead think and talk about curriculum. Always start with the question, ‘So what do you want to do?’ not ‘What do you want to do with this technology?’ At some point, the whole concept of educational technology will go away, and we’ll move to just plain-old education. I mean, do you ever hear the phrase business technology? Political technology? Journalism technology? It’s always struck me as strange that we separate the two things, when the reality is that if we’re using it well, the technology should be as seamless as chalk and pencils. We try to always start with a conversation about what teachers want to have happen, and then work from there to incorporate whatever tool might be most effective.” He has a valid point that we can all strive to achieve.

Kudos to Nan Shastry for developing www.brainybetty.com, a free resource for hundreds (yes, hundreds) of PowerPoint templates, backgrounds, graphics, certificates, fonts, photos, web site templates, icons and emoticons, (catch your breath), scrapbook resources, tutorials, troubleshooting tips and more!!!! As the creator states in her Terms of Use, “you can download anything on this site for personal or business or educational use”. She also requests that when you share the templates, a kind word of recognition of the creator would be appreciated. This is a resource you will want to especially check out.

One of the challenges we face as we upload documents to our blogs or send them as attachments to an email is that the person trying to open those documents might not have the application to open them. You also might want to convert the document so that it cannot be changed after it’s downloaded.

One solution is to convert your document as a pdf (Adobe Portable Document Format) file before uploading or attaching it. Anyone can open a pdf document with Adobe Reader, available free on the web (http://www.adobe.com). There is also a free tool available on the web to convert your documents to pdf format before uploading or attaching them called PrimoPDF (http://www.primopdf.com). This tool will allow you to create PDFs from any printable document.