AuthorStream-amazing tool for sharing PowerPoints
I just discovered a new, free online tool from Suzie Vesper’s wikispace that I’m very excited about. It is called AuthorStream (http://www.authorstream.com). It allows you to upload a PowerPoint presentation that maintains the original settings (such as text that loads one line at a time). The hyperlinks are clickable and the slides easily advance. The bonus is that you can choose the option to “Present Live” and it provides you with a discussion window where you can invite people to join you to discussion the presentation via an invite URL. It provides a fantastic alternative for making a PowerPoint presentation interactive and collaborative. I have been using SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net) and while it has some wonderful features including the ability to add audio to your slides and make it a self-running presentation in a Slidecast, it also has some limitations. I had been frustrated by trying to get the hyperlinks in Slideshare presentations to actually work and easily move back and forth between the presentation and the link and this problem seems to be solved with AuthorStream. While I am continuing to explore the features on AuthorStream, I am very excited by the potential of the application. There are a few places where the alignment of the text changed with the uploaded presentation so that is a minor issue for me to explore. Give it a try and let me know what you think of it.
Uploaded on authorSTREAM by pgeorge
Thanks for the great post — I’ve been a longtime fan of Slideshare, but hadn’t heard of authorStream before — and, great meeting you tonight on the eduFire edublogger meetup!
Hi Peggy, Thanks for sharing this tool. I use slideshare a lot but get frustrated when the custom animations dont work. So, I am about to register for this tool. Also, I was looking on your blog for a post on gl.am links but couldnt find one. So, although I have added this comment on your Learn Central wall, I will add it here as well.
As we are now on a 2 week autumn break, I am having a wonderful time catching up with all types of online work. Therefore I am now going back and listening to the classroom2.0 LIVE recordings that really interest me – and that is most of them! It intrigued me that you are now adding gl.am links, but am struggling to work out what they do, how you get them and most of all is this something we should add to Tech Talk Tuesdays and eT@lking as I want these sessions from elluminate to be as accessibly as possible? How did you find out about them? Are they easy to do?
Also, I love the fact that classroom2.0 LIVE is available on iTunes. How difficult was that to do? Can you get the elluminate recording onto iTunes, or do you have to use Camtasia studio or something like that? I am really keen to get the answers. Thanks in advance and love your shows!
Next week, we have ACEC2010, which is our big Australian Teachers conference for computer educators and educators interested in using IT, so I am really looking forward to that.
Hi Anne, Thank you so much for your feedback. I am so behind on posting to my own blog with all of the posting I do in LearnCentral and other places. I really should do a blog post about gl.am because it is a tool I love! I wrote you a long reply to your message on my LearnCentral page and it seems to have disappeared! Ugh! I would love to do a sharing session with you in my Elluminate vRoom so show you some things about gl.am and how we publish our content in iTunesU. Let me know if you’d like to do that and we’ll schedule a time. You are doing so many wonderful things and I wish our time zones weren’t so different so I could join more of them. e@Talking is 1:00am for me! Send me a tweet if you’d like to get together in Elluminate for a sharing session. 🙂