The E-learning Curve at Edublogs

Microsoft Producer for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, the current version of this popular add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint, is a freely available application that facilitates the capture, synchronisation, and publishing of audio, video, slides, and images. The primary reasons for choosing this application for content integration were it’s low learning curve for non-media experts, as well as it’s facility to export SCORM metadata as part of the final output package.

Other features include the familiar Microsoft Office interface provided, as well as the ability to import Microsoft formats including Visio files, Windows Video and Windows Audio files, spreadsheets data etc., without major conversion issues. These file formats are output as common HTML, JPEG and GIF files during rendering, and appropriate structured metadata is generated to mark the content for inclusion in a database repository.

Some disadvantages of Microsoft Producer are that it will not “play well” with file formats like QuickTime .MOV files, Photoshop .PSD files or Adobe .PDF documents, which means that content needs to be rendered in a Microsoft-friendly format.

Microsoft Producer enables the content integrator, in a three-tabbed timeline-based interface, to finely-tune synchronisation of the slide, audio, and video elements of the presentation.

(Using Microsoft Producer: A Guide for Educators, pp. 6-7)

Figure 1 Microsoft Producer 2 UI

Final rendering of content was normalised using bit-rate, hardware and software parameters optimised for output to DVD for playback on Windows-based PCs and laptops.

References:

Microsoft Corporation Inc. (2004) Using Microsoft Producer: A Guide for Educators [Internet] Available from: http://www.microsoft.com/education/edguideproducer.mspx Accessed 4 Apr 2008 pp6-7

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