Alternative Presentation Resources

Posted on April 5, 2020 by TDWolsey

By Thomas DeVere Wolsey

School buildings closed for the rest of the year and universities shuttered their doors, but education must and does go on. In my formerly face-to-face classes, presentations we scheduled for live audiences are now going to be online. Alternatives to live presentations are many, and I will share some of them in this post.

First things first, though: How do you choose an online presentation tool?

  1. Determine what aspects of the presentation you will assess and how that will be done. What gets assessed depends on your tolerance for new technologies (or willingness to try them) and that of your students. Remember that many of them will be trying out tools they have never used before.
  2. Are you able to support your students as they try out new digital tools? If not, are they able to find the support they need? Check out this post on the lazy classroom for a few ideas about how much to challenge your students to try new tech tools.

Onward to some curated resources that you may find helpful. Add your own in the comments, and you might enjoy this post by our colleague, Renee Hobbs where she shares examples of some digital tools she uses.

People working

There are a variety of free digital, web-based resources available for instructors, educators, and learners to create useful and meaningful multimedia presentations. Keep reading.

MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION TOOLS

Tool Options

Glogster: Tool for creating interactive, innovative multimedia posters, glogs, and more. Read more here.

Prezi: Tool for creating visual presentations that allows you or the viewer to zoom in “to the details” or out to show the “big picture.”

VoiceThread: VoiceThread is an interactive tool that permits creators to add video, still images, audio, and text using a variety of tools.  Creators can enable comment features that permit viewers to add their own thoughts to the presentation.

Flipgrid allows users to post short videos to which others can reply asynchronously.

Narrated PowerPoint® posted to SlideShare, AuthorStream, Vimeo, or YouTube. PowerPoint includes a narration/dictate option and can be uploaded or converted for online presentation using one of the tools linked above.

PowToon is a popular and powerful video tool that is user-friendly.

You can also read the following reviews of some of these tools and a discussion of other tools here:

8 Great Free Digital Presentation Tools for Teachers to Try This Summer http://www.emergingedtech.com/2011/07/8-great-free-digital-presentation-tools-for-teachers-to-try-this-summer/ *

Teacher’s Recommendation for Academic Uses of 5 Fun Free Presentation Tools http://www.emergingedtech.com/2012/01/teachers-recommendations-for-academic-uses-of-5-fun-free-presentation-tools/

Links You Might Have Missed—Presentation Tools http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/03/links-you-might-have-missed.html

*  Note that Vuvox no longer exists.

Remember when designing your multimedia presentation:

  1. Simplicity adds value.
  2. Aim for a few words or phrases on a slide (the nugget of information).
  3. Aim for one powerful image on a slide. That image could be accompanied by minimal text, a symbol, or no text at all.
  4. Be creative in capturing and maintaining attention.
  5. Eliminate distraction: use animations, flash, or sound effects sparingly and only when necessary to get the point across.
  6. Avoid slide transitions.
  7. Design artfully:
    1. What does your audience already know?
    2. What do you want your viewers to learn?
    3. Check PresentationZen for more ideas on artful presentation design.

Learn more about Multimedia and Fair Use

Working with multimedia, almost invariably, means incorporating the works of others into a presentation (cf. Huffman, 2010). Teachers and students do have some latitude, called Fair Use. However, it is always an effective practice to make sure that the intellectual property of others are attributed or cited in any presentation. While there can be substantial penalties for infringing on the works created by others, the most important point, arguably, is that attributing the works of others is simply good citizenship. Creators want credit for their work, and any user is a potential creator, as well. In digital environments, creators, authors, and users, take care of one another by properly attributing the sources they use. Though teachers, professors, and students are very familiar with citation of text-based sources (e.g. APA, MLA, Chicago), these style guides often do not provide sufficient guidance when a student, for example, wants to incorporate images, audio, or video created by others in a multimedia presentation.  

An excellent place to begin learning about digital citizenship and fair use is the MediaLab at the University of Rhode Island. Teacher and student resources can be found on the MediaLab website.

Though not exhaustive, these websites provide a place to begin looking for music and image sources that students and teachers might use in their own multimedia presentations while considering the rights of others who have contributed their works. 

#SocialDistance #onlineteaching #COVID-19 #RemoteTeaching

Reference

Huffman, S. (2010, May/June). The missing link: The lack of citations and copyright notices in multimedia presentations. TechTrends, 54(3), pp. 38-44.

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