Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs. In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year. Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home. I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
When I learned about Closed Captioning in Google Slides from Kasey Bell & Matt Miller , I was excited but realized I wouldn't be using it much because I use Pear Deck for my Slides presentations. Well, it turns out that we can all use Closed Captioning in our Pear Deck Presentations as well! If you're not aware of the new captioning feature in Slides , it can be turned on from the presenter menu in presentation mode. You do need to have a microphone either external or internal turned on for the feature to work. It presents live text of what is being heard by the mic to the screen. Now to access this same feature in Pear Deck, it's pretty simple. You just have to click at the right time. In the video below, you'll see that if you click on the CC in the Slides Presenter bar that pops up as the presentation loads into Pear Deck, you'll get the lived closed captioning! As you can see the CC is not yet perfect and I was using my internal computer mic. But i...