ASCILITE 2004 Workshops: Syson - third party tools for PowerPoint on the web

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ASCILITE 2004 Workshop

Third party tools that bring PowerPoint to life on the web

Andy Syson
Coventry University

Objectives To provide participants with a hands on session where they can add narration and video clips to PowerPoint presentations and then convert them to a streaming format that will be uploaded to the web.

Andy Syson photo

Intended
audience Academic staff who wish to provide large multimedia PowerPoint presentations via the web. They should be familiar with using PowerPoint and the web.

Facilitator Dr Andy Syson is Head of Learning Technology at the Centre for Higher Education Development, Coventry University, UK. Before moving into Learning Technology Andy was a full time lecturer in Biological Sciences. A significant part of his duties as Head of Learning Technology is presenting and running hands on workshops.

Details of activities PowerPoint is the presentation medium of choice for most academics. However simply 'parking' a PowerPoint presentation on the web as a .ppt file to view at a later date is not a very effective or inspiring way of supporting student learning. Such presentations can be greatly enhanced by adding a narration. However this massively increases the file size to a point where even a high speed link takes several minutes to start it.
Using Impatica it is possible to convert a 60 minute (100MB) narrated presentation to 5MB file that will stream down a 56K dialup connection.
Participants will use PowerPoint to create a short presentation and then add a narration to it. The pros and cons of the different ways of adding sound to PowerPoint will be covered as will the optimum settings for the frequency and bit rate for delivery via a slow dialup connection.
As well as adding a narration participants will also gain hands on experience of creating, and adding, short (1 minute) video clips to their PowerPoint presentations. These video clips (.avi files) will be derived from both the ScreenCorder software, which each participant will use on their own computer, and from the webcam, from recordings made in the workshop on the presenter's laptop.
Participants will then use the third party software tool, Impatica, to convert the large .ppt file to a family small streaming format files. These files will then be uploaded to the web within a VLE (WebCT). No streaming server or client software is required to stream these files to the users.

References Impatica for PowerPoint. http://www.impatica.com/imp4ppt/

ScreenCorder. http://www.matchware.net/en/products/screencorder/

Logitech webcam. http://www.logitech.com/

Examples of streaming PowerPoint presentations. http://home.ched.coventry.ac.uk/demo/

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Objectives	To provide participants with a hands on session where they can add narration and video clips to PowerPoint presentations and then convert them to a streaming format that will be uploaded to the web.
Intended audience	Academic staff who wish to provide large multimedia PowerPoint presentations via the web. They should be familiar with using PowerPoint and the web.
Facilitator	Dr Andy Syson is Head of Learning Technology at the Centre for Higher Education Development, Coventry University, UK. Before moving into Learning Technology Andy was a full time lecturer in Biological Sciences. A significant part of his duties as Head of Learning Technology is presenting and running hands on workshops.
Details of activities	PowerPoint is the presentation medium of choice for most academics. However simply 'parking' a PowerPoint presentation on the web as a .ppt file to view at a later date is not a very effective or inspiring way of supporting student learning. Such presentations can be greatly enhanced by adding a narration. However this massively increases the file size to a point where even a high speed link takes several minutes to start it. Using Impatica it is possible to convert a 60 minute (100MB) narrated presentation to 5MB file that will stream down a 56K dialup connection. Participants will use PowerPoint to create a short presentation and then add a narration to it. The pros and cons of the different ways of adding sound to PowerPoint will be covered as will the optimum settings for the frequency and bit rate for delivery via a slow dialup connection. As well as adding a narration participants will also gain hands on experience of creating, and adding, short (1 minute) video clips to their PowerPoint presentations. These video clips (.avi files) will be derived from both the ScreenCorder software, which each participant will use on their own computer, and from the webcam, from recordings made in the workshop on the presenter's laptop. Participants will then use the third party software tool, Impatica, to convert the large .ppt file to a family small streaming format files. These files will then be uploaded to the web within a VLE (WebCT). No streaming server or client software is required to stream these files to the users.
References	Impatica for PowerPoint. http://www.impatica.com/imp4ppt/ ScreenCorder. http://www.matchware.net/en/products/screencorder/ Logitech webcam. http://www.logitech.com/ Examples of streaming PowerPoint presentations. http://home.ched.coventry.ac.uk/demo/