Flash as Baz, Presentations & Professional wiki's (Thing 12 & 13)

Where does that saying even come from " Flash as Baz" It certainly brings to mind the creepy image of the trench coated man ready to expose his awesomeness. I was intrigued to find out more and ponder the the term as a colloquialism  native to New Zealand/Australia, in short wikipedia has no listings and google just refereed me to quotes in text around how Baz was quick as a flash..... 

My musings translate it to be someone who is flashy. Traditionally I am not one to be flashy in academic presentations. I believe that content is more important than fancy whizbang attention grabbing graphics. That said I have seen a need to maintain peoples attention during the rough spots of full on academia rather than put them to sleep. A recent article I have read aligns nicely with this as it explores what are the fundamental keys for keeping kids engaged in learning. 

Title: Attention! Learning must be meaningful.

Personal Author: Stone, A.;   Barry, G.;   Heazlewood, C.
Source: Teacher Learning Network; v.15 n.2 p.23-25; Winter 2008

In saying that I am not flashy, I have in fact used Prezi

a few years ago for an online paper I was studying at the time. There was a percentage of our grade awarded to our presentation, so at the time I wanted it to be flash and wow the assessor. Hmmmmm, here is a link:

Prezi presentation from a post grad paper on educational change back in 2012.

http://prezi.com/vw9prazva-em/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Moving onto thing 13, the wiki. While exploring this I came across this delightfully simple explanatory youtube clip. I found it most interesting that in presenting the fundamental features of a wiki as a digital tool they had resorted to using paper and pen....... Amusing!

I had heard of wikis before this year but never really got my head around them until I was given the responsibility to co share the technology curriculum wiki hosted by team solutions: https://technologynz.wikispaces.com/ . I have found it fairly easy to navigate, but limited in terms of layout capability. It is difficult to make it look 'Flashy' and therefore does not grab peoples attention, but given that it holds a lot of information relevant to technology curriculum in New Zealand, perhaps it doesn't have to.