Information Overloaded

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Pope John Paul II called it “the conscience of mankind”. 

A man by the name of John Humphrey, a fellow New Brunswicker from Hampton, penned the first draft.  So, I thought I would celebrate by showing this beautiful video about the Universal Declaration created by the Human Rights Action Center.  

As many of you know, this New Brunswick winter has been especially taxing for a multitude of reasons. I am running out of places to put the snow in my driveway, my snowblower and broke after storm #2, and I am down a shovel. To make it worse, the St. Paddy’s Day storm is just around the corner.

I digress.

A month ago, Jeff and I were scheduled to present to the University of New Brunswick students on Technology and the Provincial Acceptable Use Policy. We had never given this presentation before and were counting on being able to work together on the Tuesday and then present the following day.

But school was cancelled!

Usually storm days are celebration days in my house. Not that day. Buried under mounds and mounds of snow, there was no chance that we would be able to meet to plan our presentation. Let me tell you, the panic was setting in!

Then I remembered Google Presentations.I had remembered Vicki Davis, a presenter at the ACTEM conference in Maine, using Google Presentations, so I thought I would give it a try. Jeff and I were able to work on the presentation together in real time and finish our slides in a few hours…pain free! The best part was the collaboration that Google Presentations offers. We would not have been able to do this with PowerPoint.

The screenshot above shows over 400 revisions that we made. We were even able to make a .pdf version of our presentation in the event of internet failure. The students loved it.

Take that cruel winter! Ha!