Saturday, January 24, 2004

Narrating PowerPoint Presentations I'm a fan of Low Threshold Applications (LTAs) because most instructors don't have time to learn more complicated instructional tools. So many instructors use PowerPoint that it's a relatively easy step to assist them to add narration and put their narrated ppt presentations up on the web. As long as these presentations are done carefully and used selectively--and kept fairly short--they can be a useful part of online and hybrid courses. A few years ago we used RealPresenter at Eastern Oregon University for this job, but since RealNetworks has discontinued support of RealPresenter, we are now planning to switch to RoboPresenter/RoboDemo. This LTA reports on one person's explorations with narration tools. The tools can also be used to narrate tours of web pages, something that is extremely helpful when assisting students to use software and obtain information from web sources. We provide a link to the LTA Archive on our Faculty Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment web page (http://www.eou.edu/ctl) within the Instructional Technology Quick Tips Archive (http://www2.eou.edu/ctl/TechTipsArchive.htm) . JH _______ LTA 29: More Options for Adding Audio Narration to PowerPoint Slides. Learn how to create narrated slide shows using RoboDemo, Camtasia, and Impatica for PowerPoint. [Low Threshold Applications] 9:54:57 AM    COMMENT []

Yahoo RSS Feeds I'm collecting resources (there are many) for a workshop that I'll offer later this term about academic blogging. I'll add this information to my resource list. Thanks to Weblogg-ed News for the link. JH _____ Yahoo RSS. In what is probably a major development in the RSS field, Yahoo has launched an RSS tool for it's myYahoo pages. Pretty cool. It offers a couple of viewing options such as headline only or short summary, which Manila doesn't seem to be able to offer. I know there has been some discussion lately about the pros and cons of full posts in and aggregator vs. just a short snippet, and I'm still not sure what side of that fence I'm on. I know that I rarely if ever visit someone's site if I can read their full posts in the aggregator. In fact, about the only site that I do visit regularly, Josh Marshall, I do so because I don't get his full feeds. Now there is really no reason for me to visit the site since the only thing that changes aside from the posts are the ads. (Maybe that's why I only get the snippets...) Anyway, at the very least this will give RSS a boost. The Yahoo FAQ on RSS is worth checking out too. [Weblogg-ed News] 9:37:59 AM    COMMENT []