Showing posts with label PowerPoint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PowerPoint. Show all posts

Friday, November 11, 2011

10:43 AM - ,,,, No comments

Presenting your PowerPoint with a Voice of its Own

Presenting your PowerPoint with a Voice of its Own (mp3)

Brainshark Presentation
Brainshark, an online presentation technology, is basically designed for business individuals such as marketers, sales people and executives for them to upload and present their presentation for business purposes. Users are able to upload their personal presentations onto their secure online myBrainshark account. When users uploaded their presentations on Brainshark, the system will automatically convert the presentations to a format supported by the system itself. Files such as .ppt, .pptx and .odp are accepted by the system to be converted to be used for the online presentation. Besides that, the maximum file is as large as 200mb and users are able to apply background music for the online presentation. Below is an example of Brainshark and its link to the webpage:




As stated above, brainshark is able to accept Microsoft PowerPoint as one of the sources to be converted to fit its compatibility of its system. After uploading the PowerPoint, users can use the telephone or computer microphone to record voice narration. Users will narrate the points and elaborate what they wish to convey as the voice recorder records the voice of the user on the particular slide. After saving the best voice narration for the slides, the user can move on the next step on narrate the next slide. Furthermore, users too can add additional features such as background musics. Below are some pictures of steps to be taken notice during narration of the slides:

Types of presentation that can be done :

  • Add voice to Power Point
  • Narrate a document
  • Upload a video
  • Make a photo album
  • Produce a podcast


Steps to be done for a PowerPoint narration:




Number of slides

As shown in the picture, that column shows the number of the slides. The slides is in the same order when the PowerPoint presentation is uploaded.

Visible part of the current slide

The large screen on the left of the column will show exactly what is in selected. This screen will ease the users to narrate what they wish to convey in the current slide.

Voice recorder (controller)

The voice recorder will act as the controller for the awesome device. Users can retake the narration if there is an error during narration, discard useless or error voice recording and also save the voice recorded.

Time duration for voice recording

In this column, there will be timers recorded for the duration of the narration for selected slides. Every slides has its own time duration besides it.

In the final stage, after saving and editing the voice-based presentation, the final Brainshark can be delivered via a Web link or can be embedded in a Web page, for example, in Blogger. Below is a product of narrated PowerPoint Presentation of my bibliography:




You can even go to my Brainshark page to view it through this link:

Is it useful for language learning and teaching?


This website is very useful when it comes for language teaching and also sharing ideas with all the educators around the world. By preparing a PowerPoint presentation, the user is able to voice out his or her opinion on a certain subject or field and viewers can ask or give advises or opinion on the presentation itself. Besides that, language teachers can use this website to provide the classroom with a narrated PowerPoint Presentation, which may excite the class more and making language teaching in the classroom more enjoyable. Students may even learn more because students will not only listen to what the teacher narrated, but they will view as well what is the teacher talking about, enabling them to understand more about the subject being taught.

What I like about Brainshark:
  • Is free
  • Provide a list of services for users
  • Is easy to use
  • Providing visual and sound materials in a same time to the students in the classroom
  • PowerPoint presentation can be viewed by every viewers, as long as the slide is set for public views.
  • Sharing ideas to every educators on a particular topic
What I dislike about Brainshark:
  • Takes up a lot of time for narration
  • Requires constant use of internet as recording is activated and saved using internet
  • Facilities such as computers and laptops are needed
  • No face-to-face interaction





Tuesday, November 8, 2011

2:52 PM - ,,, No comments

Lets PIM PAM PUM !!! Is That Easy!

Lets PIM PAM PUM !!! Is That Easy! (mp3)

Photos as presentation for Language Teaching
In this 21st century of learning and teaching languages, whether it is English, Mandarin or any other languages in any part if the world, the teaching and learning of the language does not entirely lie on the content of the language anymore, but is whether we are able to motivated the students to learn and acquired the language throughout their whole live. Old learning styles such as drilling no longer seem designed for the modern world, and are instead relics of the 19th century. Hence, teachers need to bring learning of language, well, in my case, English to a higher and advanced level. Visual learning and teaching techniques are one of the best a teacher could use in a class as almost everyone, especially students, learn best through visualization.

In this post, there are two websites that will be introduced. Even though both of the websites are different, the concept of using these websites are the same, and they share one same similarity, which is using photos to make presentations slides to teach students through visualization. Usually, whenever teachers mentions about presentations slides, the first answer they will give is "Let's just use Microsoft Power Point then.". Using Microsoft Power Point is always a choice provided, but PimPamPum-Bubbler, and also PimPamPum-Bookr differs vastly compared to the common used Microsoft Power Point. Both Bubbler and Bookr use real human-taken pictures in Flickers to be inserted into slides in both websites and present the whole presentation to the class when it is done. Below are examples and the links of Bubbler and Bookr:
































How to use Bubbler?

Everything will be explained by using the picture below:



1. Insert the name of the tag, and Bubbler will search the photos for you.

Under the 'tag' column, insert the topic or name of the tag that you wish to search. By inserting the name of the tag, Bubbler will search through all the pictures using the same tag in Flickr. People insert pictures in Flickr for public view and usually, they will tag those pictures with certain names, such as Albufeira, Chinese New Year, Forbidden City and ect. So, the pictures with the same tag as inserted in the 'tag' column will prevail.

2. 17 pictures under the tag from Flickr will be presented.

After the hit the search button, all the pictures under the same tag will be presented in front of your screen in a small horizontal way beside the tag column. There will be 17 pictures presented once in a time. Users can hit the next button at the very end of the line of pictures to search for other photos if they could not find any pictures they are fond of.

3. Picture can be drag to the slide to be used as presentation.

When the users have found pictures that they like, they can click on the picture and drag it to the blank presentation page in the middle of the screen to make it as an official slide of the presentation. Users can drag the pictures to the middle again to make a new slide or by dragging the picture onto a new slide after inserting a new slide at the bottom of the blank slide. You can inserted a blank slide before or after the current slide.

4. Bubbles can be inserted to insert words in the slides.

If the picture have some special part or event to be mentioned, users can insert bubbles onto the slide, so that they can insert words into the slides. This is to make explanation of the picture slide more convenient and visible to all spectators. There are three types of bubbles that the users can get to choose from.

5. Publish it.

After the users is satisfy with all the slides, they can publish it for public view or for their own presentation. Below is a example of a complete and published pimpampum-bubbler picture presentation:





What I like about this website:

  1. Students are able to work on their own and this not only will encourage autonomous learning, it will too creates personalisation.
  2. It's free
  3. A very fun way to create variety in terms of activities in class or topics
  4. Does not violate copy rights as pictures are taken straight from Flickr and users will not be able to copy those pictures.


What I dislike about this website:

  1. The aim of the lesson maybe diverted as students may search for inappropriate pictures.
  2. Time consuming
  3. Once published, the slides can't be edited.
  4. It maybe boring.
  5. Schools need to provide internet and sufficient computers for students and teachers.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)