One of the processes which has never been much fun for me with a laptop has been working with video. That's why when the thought popped into my head of using the iPad for my primary presentation tool--using Keynote, which is top-down, the best presentation software around--I was thrilled but another question immediately surfaced.
The question was simply, "If I implement a Think-Pair-Tweet approach to reflecting on a question, wouldn't it be neat to interview someone ahead of time, embed the video of that interview, and then play it as a normal response of the presentation?" You know, pre-record some responses from real people in the audience to the question I'm going to ask, then include those in the keynote so that instead of asking the audience to share--which can have one running around the room like Phil Donahue (or David Warlick doing his Phil Donahue imitation, which is hilarious to listen to), you just record several quick video interviews then embed them in subsequent slides to the Think-Pair-Tweet slide.
So, that's what I did with my iPad. I'd prepared some Think-Pair-Tweets, and then, did some on the spot interviews with folks in the audience with the Camera app on the iPad. Then, I switched over to Keynote, and dropped those video interviews onto the slide following the Think-Pair-Tweet.
It worked beautifully, and more importantly, easily. The only suggestion? Record the video in landscape (sideways) mode rather than portrait...you get a nicer video to work with that's wide. Well, maybe one other. Try to find a place to pull the person aside where there's not a lot of background noise. I wonder how difficult it would be to grab a microphone that would work on an iPad to get better quality. Still, imagine doing this in the classroom...absolutely wonderful applications possible!
My special thanks to the LoneStar Technology Integration Academy folks who were open to the experiment, and I want to give a shout out to Merkel ISD's Cassie Beard, Argyle ISD's Mandy Pels, and Denton ISD's Barry Fox (my first victim) and Ernie Stripling.
I definitely encourage you to give this a shot during your next preso from an iPad! The audience really enjoyed seeing folks from their district featured in the presentation, and, IMHO, broke up the monotonous droning on of the presenter (that's me!).
Here are some examples of what that looks like, albeit without the video play...I hope to post that later:
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