Primary Unit 6a Multimedia Presentation - Authoring Package

[crc-ict]

Dear All,

 

A cry for help from my fellow Primary people here!

 

I have been asked to look into suitable software for teaching the Unit 6A on Multimedia Presentation. It appears that we need a Multimedia Authoring package to cover all the aspects of the Integrated task.

 

The teacher has a set of published plans and examples which need a program called HyperStudio, but it's old, expensive and to my mind, not very child-friendly.

 

We need something which is pretty basic, and preferably cheap - it's not something we're going to use outside of this unit and it's hard to justify around £300 for a site licence for a single unit. Any suggestions?

 

I've looked at using PowerPoint, but I'm not sure that we can acheive the aims of the unit easily enough. I know you can set up actions and buttons with PowerPoint, but it's not a straightforward process is it?

 

I'm out of ideas and would love to hear how other people are getting around this. Feel free to PM me if you'd rather not post publicly.

 

Cheers,

Chris.

[meastaugh1]

How about 2Simple 2Create? A site license is £299.00. May be out of your price range unless you could use it for other aspects of the curriculum?

[SimpleSi]

In my schools we use Impress (the OpenOffice PowerPoint equiv) or PowerPoint to do this.

 

(We tried it out as a cluster project a couple of years ago- had a mixture of years 4/5/6 from my schools doing it)

 

The pupils do it as a cross-curricular activity - e.g. when doing a history project they present it using Impress - 2 birds with the one stone

 

As with most things, the children take to it like ducks to water - the problem is having someone around who knows the package sufficiently well to answer questions like "How do I set a background picture for all pages?" - so be prepared

 

regards

 

Simon

[SimpleSi]

I just remembered I had one on my pendrive - you can see it here

http://www.geocities.com/siwalters_uk/WorldWar2Multimedia.sxi

 

There is no video (its 22MB and the downloads would kill my website) but I assure you it works when included

 

It shows how they've embedded pictures and video and created links.

 

regards

 

Simon

[crc-ict]

Cheers, Simon.

 

I've actually had another look at PowerPoint and think we can probably make that work...

 

I had (rather embarrassingly) forgotten that when I looked at it before, I was at home and looking at the 2007 Beta which does away with the 'Action Settings' right-click menu and makes interactive things a little trickier. Looking again at PowerPoint 2000, it seems much easier!

 

@meastaugh1: Thanks for the suggestion of 2Create. I looked at that too, but the cost issue is the same as HyperStudio - £300 is a lot to shell out for just one unit. I can't see anyone else using it the rest of the year!

[SimpleSi]

I can't see anyone else using it the rest of the year!

 

Cross-curricular and embedding ICT are the key teacher-speak words to use

 

Last years project was doing the same thing using stop-animation - at one of my schools, Year 2 were doing it use the Digital Blue cameras

 

And of course don't forget MS Photostory - brilliant for recapping - and its gets boys who don't like writing, doing it.

 

regards

 

Simon

[brent2710]

you can try to download a trial from http://www.ancientlab.com and see if this is what you are looking for. It actually uses multimedia technology to deliver your lessons. It employs streaming.

 

There are 2 versions you can choose from

1. Alabpresenter - present your teacher PC screen to all your student's PC

2. Alab training - your teacher can show a webcam or external video source, Audio, interactive text (where student can type in questions or answers), and PC screen (where you can show powerpoint slides) to all your student's PC.

 

It supports high resolution 1440x1024