[Building Sakai] Presentation tool

[James Marca]

On Thu, May 07, 2009 at 09:54:34AM -0400, Mark Norton wrote:
> Gopal Patil wrote:
> > Thanks Norton,
> >
> >  do you mean there is support in sakai to convert PPT 's to images?? 
> > or we need to convert that externaly?
> I believe there is support to upload a PPT and convert it such that it 
> can be presented by the Presentation Tool.  I don't recall exactly how 
> this is done, but I believe that it can be done.

I never had much luck with the presentation tool.  It generally works
as advertised, but doesn't do what people expect---show a powerpoint
presentation. 

If you want to use the presentation tool, I can't speak to any
conversion facilities inside of Sakai, but I don't recall seeing any.
We did try an automatic conversion to images and text approach with a
different e-learning platform during our trial period (sorry I do not
recall the name, other than it was not Moodle) that integrated
OpenOffice libraries to convert ppt to either flash or html.  We also
tried using ppt itself to generate a website for inclusion into Sakai.


We eventually settled on a toolchain using Adobe Presenter, which does
a pretty good job of exporting to Flash in a SCORM-compliant way, and
it now comes bundled with the upgraded Adobe Acrobat package we can
get at pretty reasonable academic prices.  We're currently hooking
that up in a site by uploading the entire output directory into
resources (yay webdav), and using the Web Content tool to link the
generated index.html page as a 'tool'.  We are not using the SCORM
tool (yet) but it seems to have matured since we first set off on this
route.

In the end, all approaches that convert ppt into images and text
didn't cut it for the instructors who were preparing the ppt files in
the first place.  The primary failing we noticed right off was the
lack of support for animations.  I'm not talking about slide
transitions; I'm talking about things moving within a slide to
demonstrate concepts.  (But even slide transitions would be nice to
break up the monotony.)  

Further, after we started using Adobe Presenter we realized another
problem with most conversion tools is the lack of audio and timing
support.  In one of the web resources related to her book slide:ology
(sorry, can't find the link), Nancy Duarte noted that without a person
"presenting" the images and text, it isn't really a presentation.
With a voice-over and presenter-timed slide advances, Adobe Presenter
lets you come close to a live presentation.

Finally, it would be awesome if we as a community could add audio,
animations and timing into some sort of accessible, Fluid-based
hyper-lightbox.

Hope that helps, and sorry for side-tracking the thread.

James Marca

> >
> > and what i understood is we should only upload images in presentation.
> Well ....  you might be able to include other things in a presentation 
> such as web pages or videos.  You might try tinkering with the 
> presentation list file.  It's been years since I was involved with this, 
> Idon't remember all the details.
> 
> One thing that might give you more information is to search Jira for 
> tickets associated with the Presentation tool.  That will tell you what 
> was fixed, added, etc.
> 
> - Mark
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> > Gopal
> >
> >
> > On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Mark Norton <markjnorton at earthlink.net 
> > <mailto:markjnorton at earthlink.net>> wrote:
> >
> >     I believe that support has been provided to convert PowerPoint
> >     (PPT) to a series of slides that the Presentation Tool can use.
> >      If not, it can be done by hand by exporting slides as images and
> >     making sure naming conventions are observed.
> >
> >     - Mark Norton
> >
> >     Gopal Patil wrote:
> >
> >         Hello All,
> >         I tried presentation tool and it is very nice.
> >         but i think it works only for images.
> >
> >         can I use it for PPT or PDF ???
> >         if yes what modifucations i need to do??
> >
> >         Please guide me.
> >
> >         Thanks
> >         -- 
> >         Gopal
> >         ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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> >
> >
> >
> > -- 
> > Gopal
> 
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-- 
James E. Marca
Researcher
Institute of Transportation Studies
AIRB Suite 4000
University of California
Irvine, CA 92697-3600
jmarca at translab.its.uci.edu

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