Powerpoint Producer

Have you ever had a student miss a power point lecture? On average I have one student absent from each class every day. In the past I've just pointed them towards the Power Point file I've created (or downloaded from the net) stored on the school server and told them to go through it with another student's notes as a guide for what's important.

Well, I won't be doing that again. I discovered a new program from Microsoft designed to work with power point. It is called Power Point Producer and is free to download if you have Power Point 2002 or 2003 (PP 2003 is included with Office XP). It will allow you to record a voice narration of your power point to go along with you presentation. You can even incorporate videos to run along side of your presentation (if needed). Record it once and save it for posterity (or at least for next year's absent students). The presentation is easy to pause as it plays and even includes an outline to make jumping around easy.

Another great feature of Producer is that it will allow you to do screen captures as movies. This can be very useful if you're trying to teach your students how to use a program. I've also found this useful for training my fellow faculty members. Show them how to do something once (record while you're doing it) and you'll hopefully never need to show them again.