Lessons learned
In using technology to teach and to lecture, one is bound to make mistakes - whether it is the style file or the software or the animation not working, I am sure we all experienced some "demo effects" that have taught us lessons. I will start with mine:
- Green is a bad color for projectors not only it is one of the major combinations in colorblindness (red-green) but it is also very hard to read when the background is light, e.g. white.
- Demo effects are inevitable, namely, if you are brave enough to give a demonstrations, e.g. to use any kind of software, you should also be prepared that it might not work as expected. Basically, since there is no way out of this, one ought to have either sense of humor, or an alternative schedule.
- Changing slide-presentations player will change behavior: tipically this is true when using say Powerpoints slideshows on OpenOffice or OpenOffice slideshows on Powerpoints. The usual problem is the size of the fonts but animations are also a major issue. One way out: make a pdf - make a flash.
Your turn.
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From PP to mp4, from Win to
From PP to mp4, from Win to Mac.
I have recently switched from Windows computers to Macs. The change was mainly triggered by my desire to produce podcasts of my lectures. By the availability of iPod Touch and other similar devices taking class rooms to pockets, podcasting lectures has become important.
With this comment to Olga’s posting I would like to share some of the technical problems and the solutions that I found while converting from Windows to Mac.
My lecturing materials is in the form of PowerPoint slide shows. In the slide shows I have written mathematics using MathType. Pdf and Flash versions of these slide shows work reliably and well in many settings. Pdf files are well viewable on an iPod Touch. With my eyesight, 24 pt fonts are preferred but even 18 pt fonts are perfectly legible on an iPod Touch.
For an iPod, a recorded presentation must be an mp4 file. I have not found a reasonable way to convert Flash into mp4. The solutions that I have experimented were either not able to convert the audio file well, or, if they were, then there were problems with the video part. After some experiments I gave up trying to convert a Flash movie to mp4 in a Windows setting.
Keynote, Apple’s competitor to PowerPoint, seems to be a good solution for the creation of pod casts. One may record a Keynote presentation and export it to a podcast by a click of the “mighty” mouse, as Apple calls the white mouse they are selling. (I prefer Logitech myself.)
Keynote also imports PowerPoint presentations fairly well. Invariably I do need to edit the files. Converting the MathType formulae of the PowerPoint files does not work automatically.
One needs to do the following steps.
Open the PP file containing formulae in a version of PP for Macs. You need to have MathType installed.
Open every formula in MathType (by simply clicking the formula), and close the formula.
Save the file.
Import the file to Keynote.
After these steps the problems with fonts have been resolved. You may also add formulae produced by MathType to Keynote files directly. But once the formulae have been entered (by cutting and pasting) Keynote seems to forget that they were MathType formulae. Keynote then treats them as pictures only. Or at least so it seems to be.
Now that I figured out the details of podcasting, I am busy crating podcasts of all my lectures. I will make them available through this portal. For the moment they are all in Finnish. English versions will follow later.