Escapades with Captivate and YouTube

Maybe ‘escapades’ is the wrong word, although it was certainly a new departure for me. Having created a screencast using Adobe Captivate, and previously set-up a YouTube account, I was then able to automatically publish to YouTube. The result is embedded below:

Unfortunately the process could only be recorded once as I only had one spare educational email address. I would have liked the screencast to be smoother, but hopefully it still gives an idea of the steps. Also the quality of the YouTube video is not very good (I didn’t see an option to choose the quality so this might just be what YouTube can handle?). At least some lessons learned anyway!

Prezi tips from thewikiman [sic]

I am working on improving the Kaptur Prezi (still very much a work in progress but this process itself has been an aid to conceptualising the project). I was having problems with creating links in Prezi, and after a Google search was taken to a ‘how-to’ Prezi by thewikiman.

So, some Prezi tips from thewikiman that I found helpful:

• ‘Your URL changes when your title changes so make sure you have a title you’re happy with before you make the link public!’
• Link to JISC TechDis Web2Access report on Prezi Accessibility
• Using hidden frames to create a more interactive Prezi – I have used hidden frames but not really thought of Prezi in this way -see thewikiman’s interactive library map Prezi
• Really useful link about using Prezi in learning and teaching in the US – blog post by Hal Kirkwood, SLA blog, 16 May 2011
  Quote from the blog post:

  ‘It allows for a much deeper opportunity to create more conceptually interesting presentations. Students pay attention more…they are more focused on the material…they want to try it. Information literacy becomes more engaging using Prezi.’

The problem with my Prezi links…
I had already tried the usual exit and back to edit etc, but I think the problem was due to the long list of links – the top one in the list was fine but the rest weren’t hyperlinked. I solved it by entering a new text item for each separate link, although Prezi didn’t like the Twitter link at all, maybe because of the characters ‘#!’.

New Prezi features are excellent

Prezi has introduced three new features which will make it even easier for users to get to grips with creating zooming presentations on an ‘infinite’ canvas.

November 2011 – Colouring text feature

• Spooky, when Curtis, Jac and I last met in Brighton we were saying this would be a good (essential) feature, and so it is nice that Prezi now lets you highlight text and select a colour; previously each section of text had to be one uniform colour.

October 2011 – Path thumbnails

• My favourite new feature – instead of having to play in show mode to check you have the right bit captured in the frame or path, you get to see thumbnails at the bottom showing the progression. The best bit is, that as with all Prezis, you are not limited to the path and can always go ‘off piste’ and then return to the path if useful.

September 2011 – Prezi templates

• This makes it very fast to create a Prezi presentation. The positive side maybe that more people get engaged with Prezi; the downside maybe that Prezi presentations become more uniform and similar. I am working on improving my latest Prezi which started off with one of their templates. This is very much a work in progress (Kaptur Prezi).

Changing Light: a plethora of digital tools as slides gasp their last?

The following links are copied from this invited blog post via the Association of Curators of Art and Design Images (ACADI):
http://acadi.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/changing-light-a-plethora-of-digital-tools-as-slides-gasp-their-last/

Links

• Original presentation abstract for ‘Changing Light’ 2010
• Final peer-reviewed version of written paper for ‘Changing Light’ 2011 (PDF)
• Additional published papers available freely here: UCA Research Online MTG Outputs