It's all about MULTIMEDIA this week!
(Source: deviantART)
So we are required to come up with a presentation kit and courseware for Assignment 1. Previously I have installed OpenOffice in my laptop, and it comes in handy again as expected :) Although I was very much contented in using Microsoft Office Powerpoint for presentation, it's a different case this time around. I had to use OpenOffice Impress to create a presentation kit based on Assignment 1.
I've already predicted that it wasn't easy using Impress and I was so right! Despite it being very minimalistic, I had to double, or maybe triple the effort of creating a presentation kit than using Microsoft Powerpoint. Basically, this presentation kit contains the essence of our chosen topic, which is Internet and Computer Security. A good presentation should always be minimal, compact and possesses good flow. It should not be very wordy (let's say 1000 words) because that totally defeats the idea of a presentation, isn't it? A presentation resembles a thousand words, therefore, the presenter should be well-versed in his/her presentation to get the message across. Bear K.I.S.S (Keep It Straight and Simple) in mind when you're designing a presentation.
Check out this link for awesome tips on presentation: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-tips-for-preparing-a-professional-presentation/
My personal experience of designing a presentation kit?
Well, every now and then, everyone of us are required to present in class, be it for activity or assignment purpose. At times I enjoyed doing one but when it comes to wordy presentation, I found myself bored and had a hard time compressing the ideas. As an audience, I am most likely to be attached to minimalistic presentation. Visual aids can be a plus, however too much of it automatically condense the entire idea of presentation. It should be used appropriately not, for the sake of adding more slides to it. Also, I really enjoy a realistic presentation. Everything in the presentation should be related, not cluttered ideas all over. A good presentation also lies on a good speaker. A good speaker should not be reading from the slides but "presenting". It can be referred to at times but it should not be used as a reading material. Audiences will be bored since they, too can read from the slides, don't they?
Back to my experience with dealing with Impress, I was frustrated that it wasn't as user-friendly as Microsoft Powerpoint. Diagrams and texts weren't easy to be pasted into the slides. Everything needed a revamp once they were pasted into the slides. It is in contrast with Microsoft Powerpoint. They merge whatever formatting from the original document and we can easily transform it to our desired fonts. It is not the case with Impress. We had to do everything back from basics and it took longer time than it supposed to to design a presentation kit. Impress would be good for a simple presentation without multimedia and audio aids but certainly not for important presentation. Microsoft Powerpoint is the better alternative to presentation. Nevertheless, my pair and I complete the presentation and we upload it on my Google Docs :) Good job again!
For courseware, we had to come up with a video using Movie Maker, a layered graphic/image using GIMP and audio using Audacity. Download links of all programmes will be provided at the end of the post. The courseware is also related to Assignment 1. We used Windows Live Movie Maker to come up with a video. The video contains the bits and pieces of our topic and appropriate images were also inserted. We made sure that we applied transition effects for a more catchy video. It would be bland without any effects. After that, we used Audacity to edit our selected music effects for the video. We applied "Fade In" and "Fade Out" effects as well as trim any unnecessary clips of the audio. We used 4 background songs for our video, the beginning, middle and credits section. The effects are very useful because it creates a smooth flow of songs throughout the video. You would not want the songs to play endlessly without any fading towards the end. It will be a monotonous video and unable to appeal to audiences to watch your video. Audacity is a free programme, therefore it is available for use all year round.
GIMP provides a free alternative of Adobe Photoshop. I've used Photoshop before back in my school days to design banners and brochures. The skills have gone rusty, I must say. Nevertheless, Photoshop is an amazing software for designing and there are JUST SO MUCH to learn from it. On the other hand, GIMP is a simpler programme with similar features (e.g layering). I've utilised this programme in creating buttons for my courseware. The buttons created were nicely designed and they were inserted in my Powerpoint courseware. My verdict for GIMP? It needs to be more user-friendly. The necessary buttons were hard to locate. Once I'd created the button for my courseware, 3 similar files appeared. It takes time to close the remaining unused files. Apart from that, the text inside the buttons were permanent. I couldn't change it and the steps need to be repeated all over again. That's not how it works with Adobe Photoshop unfortunately. Despite being very expensive in the market, I believe it's the best designing software out there that caters to every need. Nonetheless, it's a good software to start off before proceeding with Photoshop. GIMP does not use up so much memory for an advantage.
So that's what I've done this week. So much to learn and so much to experience. It was a good one, though, and I hope to be able to utilise whatever I've learned in the near future.
Hope everyone had fun exploring and have a great day!
Live Movie Maker: http://explore.live.com/windows-live-movie-maker?os=other
GIMP: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
B. Ed TESL IPGKS-UKM
IPG Kampus Sarawak
Jalan Bakam 98009
Miri
E-mail: barbarakath108@gmail.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/barbara_kath
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