YouTube PowerPoint plug-in

A short post about one of the many PowerPoint plugins available. This YouTube PowerPoint plug-in worked fine on my laptop, but wasn’t so great on a Mac in a different venue (I was expecting a PC and time to test my presentation) it didn’t work out and there was no YouTube clip as a consequence! However in theory it is very simple to use.

Link

• Access/download YouTube PowerPoint plug-in

CHArt 2010 conference – VADS images

To accompany my presentation Changing light: a plethora of digital tools as slides gasp their last? at the Computers and the History of Art (CHArt) 2010 conference, I have selected a few VADS images.

To view the lightbox of VADS images please click on the hyperlink below (or copy and paste it into the address/location field of your browser):

http://www.vads.ac.uk/lboxsent.php?email=mtg@vads.ac.uk&lbname=CHArt2010&si=1

A plethora of digital tools

One of the points I am going to raise in my presentation at the Computers and the History of Art (CHArt) conference tomorrow is that there are so many options out there, it becomes like information overload, almost a digital cacophony of different tools that can be used for visual arts presentations. As if to illustrate my point:

Links

• EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). 7 Things You Should Know About Next-Generation Presentation Tools
• National Institute for
  Technology in Liberal Education. Beyond PowerPoint: Trends in Presentation Technology (23rd April 2010)
• National Institute for
  Technology in Liberal Education. Beyond PowerPoint: emerging technologies (4th October 2010)
• Changing light: a plethora of digital images as slides gasp their last? (abstract)

Multi-Slide PowerPoint plug-in

I am looking forward to attending the Computers and the History of Art (CHArt) conference, day two, tomorrow. Due to my research topic I am most interested to hear the presentation on the Multi-Slide PowerPoint plug-in:
Katharina Lorenz and Brett Bligh, University of Nottingham, UK
Vorsprung durch Technik: Multi-Display Learning Spaces and Art-Historical Method
Already today, day one, of the CHArt conference I was pleased to experience a confident Prezi presentation by Jamie Allen.

Links

• Real Time Realtime – Time as a Technological Material in Art (Jamie Allen’s abstract)
• Vorsprung durch Technik: Multi-Display Learning Spaces and Art-Historical Method (abstract)
• University of Nottingham Multi-Slide case study (PDF)
• Multi-Slide PowerPoint plug-in
• Bligh, Brett, and Lorenz, Katharina. 2010. The Rhetoric of Multi-Display Learning Spaces: exploratory experiences in visual art disciplines. Seminar.net Volume 6. Issue 2.

Improvements to PowerPoint

The following comments are based on PowerPoint version 2007.

Suggested improvements:

• To be able to rotate the image in very fine detail i.e. 0.01 of a degree increments. This is something that would be useful for positioning images in the study of Art History e.g. comparing a drawing with a painting, and trying to match relevant areas of both on one slide, lining things up precisely.
• To have greater control and options regarding brightness and contrast e.g. like image editors have ‘curves’, and mid-tones. I realise it is possible to make these changes in an image editor prior to importing the images, however feedback from the survey suggested that people would like to use PowerPoint to edit their images.
• To be able to apply formats to groups of slides, i.e. not just to groups of images on one slide. If you select a slide the ‘Format’ tab disappears. It takes ages if you have to format the images on each slide individually.
• To be able to pan and zoom slides and content without having to first create a complex animation, and by being able to have more control than a projector which can only zoom into the centre of a slide i.e. no panning.
• To be able to customise your palettes and right-click menu options (without needing to know how to code) e.g. if there are certain features you use all the time and want to have close-to-hand or grouped together to improve efficiency.
• To be able to apply a ‘Theme’ to individual slides rather than the whole presentation. This seems to be a bit buggy in version 2007, sometimes it seems to let you select a slide and do this, and other times it doesn’t work.

I would be delighted to hear if any of these features have been made available in PowerPoint 2010, or if a work-around is available in version 2007.

More information on using PowerPoint

For sake of speed, I have just created the following list of links which point to resources on how to improve your PowerPoint presentation technique:

• Articulate: PowerPoint for e-learning
• University of Southampton e-learning gateway for students – Using PowerPoint and PowerPoint Resources for Tutors
• Presentation Magazine: 6 ways to get your message across without PowerPoint
• Bozarth, Jane. 2008. Better Than Bullet Points: Creating Engaging eLearning with PowerPoint. Pfeiffer.
• School of Agricultural Science, University of Tasmania, Australia – PowerPoint Multimedia resources

Life after Death by PowerPoint (2010 version)

PowerPoint Add-ins

An interesting blog post on the PowerPoint FAQ Web site, mentions both Windows and Mac possibilities for importing batches of images into PowerPoint: Batch import images into PowerPoint, by Stephen Rindsberg, last updated 10th December 2009.

One example of a tool to import images into PowerPoint is the Image Importer Wizard for PowerPoint 97 or later. More information about the Wizard is also available here: http://skp.mvps.org/iiwfaq.htm

Although there are much better options available to work with PowerPoint and audio, such as Adobe Presenter, if useful, here are some links to free add-ins for PowerPoint version 2003:

• Producer for PowerPoint: this provides a drag and drop interface to synchronize audio and video with your PowerPoint slides.
• PowerPoint 2003 Add-in: Presentation Broadcast: this is another approach to synchronizing the audio and video delivery of your PowerPoint presentations.

Links

• Adobe Presenter: “Rapidly create high-impact Adobe Flash presentations and eLearning courses from PowerPoint”
• Coral Presenter: create interactive Flash presentations from PowerPoint
• Articulate Presenter: “Quickly create Flash-based presentations and e-learning courses from PowerPoint”

PowerPoint Photo Album feature

The PowerPoint Photo Album feature solves one issue i.e. how to convert a group or folder of images quickly into PowerPoint slides and has been available as an add-in since version 2000, and integrated since version 2002.

To create a Photo Album in PowerPoint 2007:

• From the tabs at the top (Microsoft’s ‘ribbon’) select Insert, and choose Photo Album, ‘New Photo Album’.
• In the dialogue box that appears, select the insert picture from ‘File/Disk’ button, and then navigate to your folder of images.
• Hold down the Ctrl key to select individual images, or use the Ctrl +A keyboard shortcut to select everything in the folder. Choose ‘Open’.
• The images will display as filenames with a small preview when you click on each one.
• Various options include: select and use the up and down arrow keys to order the images; add a text box (empty) and put it in order e.g. if you want a slide with one image and one text box; rotate the images using the controls under the preview window; or change all the images to black and white.
• Choose page layout: either fit to the size of the whole slide ‘fit to slide’; or optionally include captions for 1, 2, or 4 images; or optionally a title for 1 or 2 images. The layout is applied to all images in the order in which they appear.
• Additional, but less useful features include applying picture frames to images, and choosing a colour/style theme for the whole album.
• Select the ‘Create’ button to finish.

The pros are that this works quickly with a defined group of images that have been prepared and carefully selected.

The cons are that if you then want to move the images around and re-size them or add additional features with PowerPoint 2003 you then face some frustrating issues e.g. when cropping an image you have to select ‘Format Picture’, then the ‘Picture’ tab, then each adjustment is only applied when you select ‘Okay’ and come out of the dialogue box.

However with PowerPoint 2007 you can either make fine adjustments in the ‘Size and Position’ dialogue, watching the adjustments happen as you are in the dialogue box, or you can select the ‘Format’ tab from the ‘ribbon’ and select the ‘Crop’ tool, dragging the crop handles as you would in any other image editor such as Adobe Photoshop.