Tweak Your Slides has Moved!

Check out my all new blog and teaching portfolio at:

http://tweakyourslides.wordpress.com

New tweaks next week, but now, a poem in progress

I am working on Tweak Your Slides, the student version. I am not really happy with the end product, so I am going to work on reorganizing and rearranging information before next month. I did fall into some kind of hole of endless nostalgia this week, though, and the result is below. It's only a first draft, and I feel the word terribly makes the whole thing seem rather juvenile. I do like the final lines though. What do you think?

(Image: Per Orla Wiberg via Flickr)

Amazon

Tonight I miss you terribly.
The flesh of your fingers
stained in script and guns
entwined with my flesh,
brown and warm and terrified
that this would be the last time
you held my hand and heart in yours.
I miss your contention,
rebelde spirit that showed me
for only a moment what
life is with a roman candle for a heart.
A moment, a mere glimpse of foam kissing shore
in an expansive ocean of time that
inevitably sweeps the foam away,
A reconstituted nothing—fish food.

Forgive these moments, love. You see,
you took the part of me
that I most wanted you to have.
The girl who, unafraid, wraps
Fairness and Justice like a sash,
cuts off one breast and takes up the bow.

What I did at work today....

While I showed Holly, Jaclyn, and Catherine how to mess around with iMovie and Garageband.

The Scariest Podcast EVER

Professional Communication and Presentation Surveys!

Hey! My students are working hard on their presentations this month. As always, I torture them with surveys. There are only 8 this month--yay! Take a few minutes to give these students some valuable information as they prepare their presentations.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Y69FCJ7
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QX2MP6Q
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C5RWX9Z
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QYP3Q3Q
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JYCMBWZ
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C3HPBTL
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C3LKLYY

Tweak Your Slides, the workshop part deux

Alright! Here it is, version 2.0 of my upcoming workshop on visual design principles for educators. I LOVE these slides. I mean, I think I am seriously in love with just how beautiful they are. I am deeply enamored by the "tight" and clean look of Helvetica Neue Condensed Black all caps at 72 pt. and above.

Yes, I did just enthusiastically proclaim love for a font style and weight. I am off to Body Pump now, but feedback is deeply and greatly appreciated. Let me know what you think!

Tweak Your Slides: Ten Design Principles for Educators (version 2.0)

View more presentations from Chiara Ojeda

Make it a Krispy Kreme Burger

So, no, I was not accepted to the University of Washington's doctoral teaching and curriculum program. Should I be more upset? Probably. Am I upset? Not really. Perhaps it's just getting to an age where I realize life is a constant ebb and flow of triumph and disappointment, and instead of frantically swimming against this certainty, I've decided to move and flow with it, releasing myself to the ecstasy of not really knowing where this current will take me.

Sometimes life is like this, a complex swirly of dirty laundry.
Or, maybe it's because I still have a decent paying job doing something I kick butt at (despite daily frustration and consternation), a healthy and happy family, fascinating and caring friends, and all of my appendages, organs, and body parts intact (oh, yeah, did I also mention I have a kick ass sense of style)? As my cousin heads off to help tsunami victims, leaving a wife and child behind, I can't help but realize that the reason I am not upset is both of the above but even more importantly, it is faith that all falls into a place and pattern in its own time.

But, the rest of the time it's a Krispy Kreme burger.
In honor of said release to aforementioned ebb and flow, I give you Neil Pasricha, of 1000 Awesome Things and his TED talk, The 3 A's of Awesome:


Look for another draft of the WIP Tweak Your Slides workshop this afternoon!

Tweak Your Slides, the workshop

Well, after a productive morning of grading, coffee seeking, and lake walking, I hunkered down and got back to work on the slides for my upcoming short presentation on visual design. I chose to use examples of my old slides as the representations of what NOT to do. I of course had an incredible bounty of amazingly BAD slide shows to choose from. It's a miracle my students didn't show up one day with pitchforks and torches clamoring for my head as a response to the crime of mass murder--I LOVED bullets. Sweet, sweet bullets, so easy to add to a slide, so completely irresistible in their "professional necessity". It's no wonder my first rule is do not use bullets.

Kill the Beast!

Some feedback on this would be super duper duper appreciated. Anyone who does respond gets some of these:

Tweak Your Slides, the workshop:

Tweakyourslides

View more presentations from Chiara Ojeda.