So I wanted to learn how to add a PowerPoint lecture as a flickr/picasa slideshow to this notebook (i.e. "blog") and more generally to my course website. I already have a Picasa account with Google which I use to share photos with friends.

Since I like Picasa's slideshow feature, I wondered if I could use the "embed slideshow" feature with Powerpoint. I just needed to figure out how to upload my PowerPoint slides as images. By presenting my PowerPoint slides using the slideshow feature, this would essentially replicate the function of much more expensive software like Adobe Captivate.

So, going into my super-nerdy mode... I read a simple on-line tutorial, and here are the results from a sample PowerPoint lecture:



Basically, the process is about as complicated as saving one's PowerPoint as ".png" files (File/Save As/) and uploading those files to either Picasa or Flickr. Then one only has to copy and paste the code from the embedded slideshow function into one's blog or html code. Note, that I chose to use one of the biggest sizes and the slideshow can easily be made smaller.

Since I will be avoiding proprietary courseware next term, I think this is how I am going to make any PowerPoint lectures available to my students. Although I have reservations about the overall benefits of publishing (or even using) PowerPoint slides, I think some students do learn better by being able to review slides that they did not quite get the first time around.

The only drawback here is that Picasa does leave a small branded logo in the bottom right. I could make the same slideshow manually using Flash CS3, but I think the time saved by this little trick is worth the branding... at least until I learn how to write the program to do this automatically.

Ironically, I think this little trick may help me to get away from using PowerPoint altogether. In a conversation with one of my former professors, I learned that he now only uses slideshows instead of PowerPoint. He said students retain more of a lecture when you show them powerful images rather than a whole lot of text in the standard, dull PowerPoint format. After attending one of his latest talks, I am inclined to agree. Although I don't have the time to research images for all of my lectures, I think I will gradually shift over to this technique.

Labels: teaching, web technology