Creating "Talking" PowerPoints
Spence Dowlen
Hello everyone. Here is another Tech
Tip from your Faculty Technology Mentors.
A while ago, I went to an excellent presentation by Sandra Perley at
a Faculty Technology Showcase where I learned to prepare “talking”
PowerPoints. These are PowerPoints that have audio files attached to
the slides.
Later on, I had to miss some classes to go to a conference. Rather
than get behind in my lectures, I made one of these talking
PowerPoints, posted it online, and assigned the students to watch
and listen to it while I was gone. It worked great!
The way to do one of these PowerPoints is the following:
-
Record a separate wav file for
each slide. This can be done with Audacity software which can be
downloaded for free from http://audacity.sourceforge.net.
-
For each slide in PowerPoint,
insert the wav file by doing the following:
-
Use Impatica to compress the files
and group all the wav files and PowerPoint file into one file by
doing the following:
-
Open Impatica for PowerPoint.
You can contact IT to install this on your computer.
-
Click “Add”
-
Select the PowerPoint file
-
Click “Open”
-
Click “Impaticize”
-
Click “Done”
-
The file will be saved as
“filename-imp”
-
Create a link to this file on your
website or through “Online Campus”.
It does take a good deal of time to do
this, although most of the time was spent just in making the
recordings. I did many retakes of the audio files once I listened to
myself and realized how many “ums” I inserted and how I used the
word “basically” far too many times. However, it did allow me to
continue to cover the lecture material, even when I could not be in
class. Most importantly, the students learned the material and did
well on the part of the exam that covered this material. They really
liked this technique and even asked me to use it more often.
If you have any questions regarding this tip, feel free to contact
me. To see previous tech tips, go to
www.columbiastate.edu/fitt and select “FTM Tech Tip.”
Spence
______________________________________
Spence Dowlen
Assistant Professor of Biology
Columbia State Community College
1665 Hampshire Pike
Columbia, TN 38401
931-540-2807