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Presentation Tools

by Fulvio Orsitto

Presentation Tools - Beyond WebCT
Picture is courtesy of cogdogblog at Flickr

What are Presentation Tools? According to Robin Good, “Web presentation tools and technologies provide the means to deliver any PowerPoint-based or similar type of visual presentation to an Internet-connected audience, no matter where participants are connecting from.” The importance of these tools is given by the fact that, in Robin Good’s opinion, “until recently, sharing a PowerPoint presentation with other people, let alone doing this in real-time, was a major challenge. The size of a typical PowerPoint file didn't make it easy to send it via email, and incompatibilities between different versions of PowerPoint made the effort even more complex for the non-technical user.” Therefore, it is crucial, Good concludes, that “newer software and web-based technologies now allow the easy-uploading of PowerPoint presentations to dedicated web presentation services and even the delivery of unattended, on-demand presentations having a custom web page address (URL).” As stated on the Blog “The Distant librarian”, “the key features that characterize web presentation technologies and delivery tools include: Automatic conversion to Flash, Thumbnails Preview, Live annotation, Interactive annotation, On-demand delivery, Audio, Full screen, PowerPoint transitions preservation.”

Why are Web Presentation Tools important? The current generation of student entering colleges and universities is characterized by unprecedented skills in terms of technology (for more details, see “Convenience, Communications, and Control: How Students Use Technology” by Robert Kvavik). According to Marc Prensky, these students are actually “digital natives”, meaning that they are all “native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.” (see "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants") Nowadays, students take technology for granted and they expect to encounter a certain level of technology in every course they take. As a consequence, according to Alma Clayton-Pedersen and Nancy O'Neill, “to better meet individual and societal needs of the 21st century, numerous leaders—inside and outside higher education—recognized at the end of the 20th century that college and university missions and practices needed to be reinvigorated. Within such a process, perhaps consensus could be reached about the new expectations we needed for students, for curricula, and given its infusion into society, for technology” (for more details, see “Curricula Designed to Meet 21st-Century Expectations” by Alma Clayton-Pedersen and Nancy O'Neill). These presentation tools provide the opportunity for students to present ideas and information to an audience. In addition, in a foreign language classroom, for example, students are able to demonstrate their knowledge and the use of the vocabulary they already learned. Presentation tools can be also used to start a discussion on a specific topic in a language class. It is useful when the subject (in particular a grammar topic) is hard to understand. The students can presents on the topic and lead the class into a discussion. If you can teach something it means you really understood it!

What are the most popular Presentation Tools? There is a large number of Presentation Tools available to those instructors who wish to use them and possibly integrate them into their courses. Among these, one must mention Spresent, “a Web-based alternative to PowerPoint”, Slideshare another free program described as “the world’s largest community for sharing presentations on the web”, Screencast-o-matic, depicted as a “free and easy way to create a video recording of your screen (aka screencast) and upload it for free hosting all from your browser with no install!” and CamStudio, an application “able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).” Since students always want to be exposed to multiple sources, Google jockeying has become increasingly relevant in the field of Presentation Tools because it adds “a new dynamic to lectures, creating a collaborative environment with elements of theater and play,” (for more details see "7 Things You Should Know About Google Jockeying") and also because it “might be an effective tool to help students acquire skills for online research while mimicking their own learning strategies (for more details see "Google Jockeying - Search Engines in the Classroom").


Applications & Examples. A very simple classroom application could be to have the students prepare a PPT presentation on a topic that is being studied at that time in the course (fashion, food, art, ect.). Following the Standards for Foreign Language Learning, from ACTFL, a presentation like this corresponds to Communication 1.3, which states: "Students present information, concepts or readers on a variety of topics". By creating the same presentation in Slideshare, another aspect of learning a language is enhanced: Communities 5.1 "Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting". In a presentation about, for example, Italian fashion, an audience outside the classroom can provide valuable feedback, this way enriching the knowledge acquired by the students into doing the presentation. Another application could be to have the students to prepare a simple slideshow on a topic that interests them. The pictures will be the starting point for class discussion, and will give the chance to the students to develop their communicative skills. As previously stated, other possibilities could be offered by applications such as Slideshare, Screencast-o-matic and Camstudio. In advanced language classes, for instance, these applications could easily (and successfully) substitute the classic students' presentation on a single topic (which usually leads to the creation of a poster with text and pictures taken from newspapers or magazines in the target language) making room for more creativity and allowing students to familiarize themselves not only with newspapers or magazines but also with websites and with clips (from youtube, etc.) in the target language. All the abovementioned applications (along with voicethread and also youtube - but with some limitations) allow students to produce very creative montages of images, clips, music and texts (which they read), leading to a final "product" (that is, a presentation) which is more creative, fun to make, entertaining and that travels easily outside of the classroom (producing wider feedback). In other words, a better and "product" that perfectly represents our rhizomatic postmodern society.


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orsitto presentation tools 0 Oct 16 2007, 6:46 PM EDT by orsitto
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