MS Producer

Alright, I am going to put on the Teacher hat for a bit today. I want to bring to my fellow teacher's attention a great tool I just learned about this semester and used in my Internet Skills class. Microsoft Producer is a free add-on for PowerPoint 2002 or higher. It allows you to capture video and audio and to combine these with a PowerPoint presentation. It is specifically designed to compress these media for delivery through the web, but could also be used to burn content onto a CD, which is what I did. My student's used it to create Webinars and although FOIP (privacy laws) restrict me from showing their work you can check out demos here.

I have to say my students really liked working with the program and found it easy to work with. They found that they could be really creative and I got some amazing presentions. However, I think that students from grade 3 up could use the program with some guidance. If you would like to use this program with a class and don't want to reinvent the wheel, email me and I will send you the practice exercise I put together for my students, you can also find the teacher guide here.