Documentation:Annotated Presentations/DIY Media

From UBC Wiki

What are Annotated Presentations?

Annotated presentations are slideshows augmented by captions, animations, and voice-overs. The annotations are designed to emphasize, augment, or better explain the information being presented. At a minimum, an annotated presentation consists of a set of slides and a voice-over, but more advanced users can add animations, drawings, quizzes, and more. Annotated presentations are usually provided in the form of a video, although it is also possible to annotate slideshows the viewer can advance at their own pace, with annotations appearing in a predetermined order.

While it's possible to create annotated presentations in a variety of ways, the focus of this toolkit will be on taking a slideshow created in a stand-alone application (such as PowerPoint or Keynote) and using Camtasia as screen-capture and editing software. If you're a student, faculty, or staff member at UBC, you're eligible for a full, free license of the Windows and Mac versions of Camtasia, a program which integrates screen-capture and video-editing software. To find out more about getting a license, click here.

How do they support learning?

Annotated presentations are just one way of many to create video which supports learning. Some uses for annotated presentations in learning include:

Creating tutorials. Creating tutorials for students to study from.

Highlight the concepts Highlighting or drawing attention to concepts or components that are important for students to pay attention to.

Storytelling Telling a story using images and annotations as a guide.

Human element Providing an instructor presence in an online environment by including a human element in instructional material.

To see a sample of faculty-created annotated presentations at UBC, take a look at Dr. Rosie Redfield or Dr. Luis Linares' YouTube channels.

Here are some more links to research related to multimedia in learning.

Examples

For the purposes of the page, an annotated presentation was developed, following the directions laid out in the 'How Do I Do It?' section. The slides were created in Microsoft PowerPoint 2013, the presentation was recorded and edited in Camtasia Studio 8, and a Logitech headset microphone was used to record the audio.

Here are download links to the resources used in the presentation. All worksheets have been filled out. The blank versions are available in the pre-production resources section.

A mixture of PowerPoint and Camtasia animations were used. While a the presentation is good example of an annotated presentation, there's definite room for improvement.

  • The presentation is five minutes and thirty seconds long, which is pushing it. Moving more complex material (like the question about layer thickness) to later videos would be a solution.
  • While the headset is a relatively nice microphone, a standalone microphone with a pop filter would help eliminate the occasional audible popping and smacking noises. The worst parts were manually edited out, which took some time.

Start-to-finish, the presentation took slightly under four hours to produce. An hour was spent planning and storyboarding, another hour spent designing the slides, half an hour writing and editing the script, slightly under half an hour to record the presentation, and an hour to edit, upload, and review. Because a lot of time was invested in planning, recording could be done relatively swiftly. In any sort of video production, the lion's share of the time should be spent in pre- and post-production work: plan accordingly!

Being able to re-use lecture slides would save time, and practice and familiarity with editing software will speed the process along, too.

What do I need?

In order to create an annotated presentation, you'll need a computer, a set of slides, a microphone, and software to record your screen and edit your presentation. If you own a laptop and an external microphone, you can download all the software you need for free, and get started.

For an overview of how UBC professor Rosie Redfield creates her videos, take a look at this.

Hardware

While computers won't be discussed (most computers should be powerful enough to record and edit a screencast) your choice of microphone will greatly affect the quality of your DIY media project.

Microphones

Here are a few useful links if you're looking at microphones.

  • The DIY Media website has a page on microphone suggestions, going over the various types of microphones available.
  • Choosing Microphones is a 4-minute video from lynda.com which has some helpful tips for deciding what kind of microphone will best suit your needs.
  • Wistia's Learning Centre demonstrates the quality of sound achieved with different mics in this 4.5 minute video.

Software

In addition to editing software, you'll need to put together a set of slides to use in your presentation

Slides Recording & editing software

There are a variety of tools you can use to create slide sets on your laptop, iPad, or Android device.

  • PowerPoint (Microsoft Office Suite)
    • PC, Mac, iPad, Windows tablet
    • Paid software with a limited demo version
    • Features basic recording functionality
  • Keynote
    • Macs and iOS devices
    • Paid software ($20 with the most recent version of Mac OS)
    • Features basic recording functionality
  • Presentations (Google Drive)
    • PC, Mac, iPad, Android tablets
    • Free software, 15GB of free cloud storage (with Google account)
  • Prezi
    • Web application, iPad app
    • Free software with 100MB storage (more with paid version)
      • All presentations created with the free version are publicly viewable
  • Impress (Open Office)
    • PC, Mac, Linux
    • Free, open-source
  • Haiku Deck
    • Web application, iPad app
    • Free core functionality, unlimited storage, some premium/paid features

Once you've created your slides, get comfortable with presenting them on your computer: make them full screen, and do a couple of practice runs of your presentation. If you aren't, become familiar with how the presentation words. Does a click go to the next slide, trigger the next animation, or make your mouse show up? Can you move backwards and forwards? Can you hide your mouse? The more familiar you are with your presentation, the less you'll have to think about when you're recording it.

While Camtasia is recommended, due to the features and free license for UBC students, staff, and faculty, basic presentations can be recorded entirely within PowerPoint or Keynote, and there are a wide variety of other editing programs you can explore. Recording an annotated presentation is very similar to recording a screencast: the [screencasting toolkit] has a wealth of information.

  • Camtasia (Mac, PC)
    • Camtasia is a dedicated screencasting and video editing tool. For tutorials and help, have a look at the Using Camtasia section of the DIY Media website.
    • To find out how to get a license for Camtasia, click here.
  • Mac OS X Snow Leopard (and higher) includes built-in screen recording tools. You can then edit your footage in iMovie or any other video editing software you have installed.
  • Windows Movie Maker (Windows)
    • Windows Movie Maker is reasonably powerful, free to download editing software.
  • CamStudio (Windows)
    • Camstudio is free and open-source. While it hasn't been updated since late 2013, it will record your screen and audio perfectly and has basic editing and annotating functions.

How do I do it?







Instructional design support

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Looking for learning/instructional design resources? Contact your CTLT learning/instructional designer, your Flexible Learning liaison, or your Instructional Support Unit for consultation.


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