» [T.e.l.l. January Summary] Finding the Best Tool for Creating Slides with Audio

Contributed by Melissa Jakubec, TRU

January’s TELL session, Finding the Best Tool for Creating Slides with Audio, was presented by Keith Webster and Hayley Hewson of University of Victoria’s Technology Integrated Learning Unit. Their session focused on their evaluation of tools for creating slides with audio.
Keith and Hayley wanted to find a tool that was the most user friendly for individuals to use on their own both to support distance learning and for on campus faculty. They wanted to identify a tool that published slides into an interactive (student-controlled click to advance) format and that was easy to work with and edit. They also wanted the tool to include options for slide notes, images and audio and that is readable by all browsers and devices. Ease of use was also a consideration, including the intuitiveness of the interface intuitive, the ease of editing a slide, image, notes or audio, and the ease of republishing after editing. They also wanted viewers to be able to cut and paste the slide notes and for the slide notes to be able to be shown or hidden.
Keith and Hayley shared their experiments with 4 different tools – iSpring Presenter 7, Adobe Captivate 8, Articulate Presenter 13 and Adobe Presenter 10 – creating a slide demo for each that you can review for yourself here http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/courses/des/tell/index.htm. They evaluated the pros and cons of each tool. You can find a detailed version of their analysis in their own PowerPoint presentation.
Their next step is to get a few more people in their office to try their top two tools: iSpring Presenter 7 and Adobe Presenter 10.
Thanks to Keith and Hayley for an interesting presentation on the process of their evaluation, as well as their results. If you want to leave more about their work, you can contact Keith at keithw@uvic.ca and Hayley at hhewson@uvic.ca.