Tuesday, July 10, 2007

spresent and The Principal Blog

Trying out the spresent presentation tool.

I learned about it from a posting by Cheryl Oakes on her Techlearning blog. spresent is a free presentation creation tool that is even supposed to give you the option of embedding a presentation into a wiki or blog. So I've been trying to create one and hopefully, you'll see it below.

By the way, Cheryl also led me to Melinda Miller's
The Principal Blog which shows that blogging is even for administrators!

If I did it right, you should see the first draft of a presentation about comparing Shenandoah,Iowa to Beijing, China by clicking here! (After the new page opens, click on the big "play" arrow in the center of your screen!) There is sound so put on your headset or make sure the volume is set correctly for your speakers.

I'm not sure if this is something that is easier to use than say PowerPoint software, but it is, at least, as easy to use as PowerPoint and it also demonstrates that some free browser-based software does have the potential to replace commercially purchased products. Being able to link to websites, flickr photos, and podcasts could also be useful and I don't know if PowerPoint has that capability or not.

2 comments:

Ron Fujihara, Sensei said...

Does the program work on all computers or does it have to be loaded on all of the computers first?

barryb said...

I assume it works on any computer with an up-to-date browser (and I'm not even sure how up-to-date it has to be). The FAQ at the website says the recommended minimum is to have at least Flash 7 installed on your computer but that they "develop and test" on Windows, Mac and Linux. There is nothing to install as it is a web-based application. Everything takes place via the web interface.