What's so great about Slideshare?
Source: http://www.bennett29j.k12.co.us/goto/Ms_J_Goodnight
Our province has undertaken a full Science curriculum rewrite. Implementation has reached the grade 10 level this year. The old Science 10 was a survey course -- so in past if students did not do well in 8 or 9, they could still sample the 4 main branches in 10 and make an informed choice when selecting a senior science. Now, that survey is accomplished across all of grades 8, 9, & 10. Students going into Biology 11 (our most popular academic science) will not have had any exposure to basic biology concepts since grade 8, and many of my students -- who failed 8 once or twice and did not even get to Science 9, will never be exposed to many topics that are interesting and pertinent to their lives. I'm not sure how that produces citizens who are more knowledgeable about science, but . . . .
Source: http://home.netcom.com/~swansont/science.html
. . . be that as it may, I've been waiting for months to order a collection of new Science 10 material. It was supposed to be published in September. It was supposed to provide me with self-contained learning packages ideal for my individualized learning setting. Unfortunately, it turned out to be several months late and pathetic. The disk of animations is nice, but there is simply not enough instructional or practice material. Even the blackline masters supplied by this company are disappointing. I expected to see lots of questions and quizzes, but they've just copied some of their graphics onto a disk, added a pretty label and put it into a plastic package, so I am scrambling to write the stuff myself and keep ahead of the students who consume my new material faster than I can produce it. I will not be blogging much until this is done.
Fortunately there are loads of great PPTs out there in the 'eduweb' for me to draw from. This led me to think about the various 'Slide-Something' programs online that allow you to find and use presentations created and shared by other folks. I've always wondered why Slideshare is so popular -- it regularly makes Top 100 lists of tools, but it doesn't preserve the animations or transitions that make PPTs interesting to follow, and if you want to use an audio file, it must be hosted elsewhere. I checked today to see if this has changed, but it hasn't, and in my opinion several other websites provide much better services. This morning's project has been to compare 7 such websites/services. I've arranged them alphabetically. Personal comments have been added in plum.
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FEATURES |
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WIDELY USED? |
- beta - guest uploads permitted |
- beta - very new |
-no sign-up required |
- very popular, but I’m not sure why |
- support depends on subscription level |
- very new; can try without registering |
- very popular
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PRESERVES ANIMATIONS & TRANSITIONS |
YES |
An alternative to PPT -- “zooming, non-linear” presentations -- you can set a path through the presentation or viewer - beautiful |
YES; also links and buttons - up to PPT 2007 - link to iSpring to convert PPT to Flash (visual quality good, but I could not get the audio to work) |
NO - PPT (not 2007), Open Office, keynote, PDF up to 100 MB |
An alternative to PPT -- great animations and transitions (Mac, PC, Linux) - beautiful
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NO If you post a trial PPT, there doesn't seema way to take it down if you don't like what you see. - can webcam yourself to narrate each slide - work from Management Console |
NO It imports each slide as an image. You'd have to convert to swf and then flv to keep all the animations - collaborative -- can add your own voice, text video comments as can viewers
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SHARING |
(1) download (2) full screen embeds (2) view on iPod (4) post on Ytube, Ttube & others (5) Present Live |
- 1 sample on view - can save & either view or edit your own projects |
(1) download (2) embed (3) email (4) post to Facebook, Blogger & more (5) bookmark |
(1) download (2) email (3) embed (4) add options to post to Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, & others |
(1) presentation cache so access offline (2) Mimeo ($)will print & deliver (3) embed (4) Host Meeting |
(1) embed (2) bookmark (3) email (4) post to social networking sites |
(1) embed (2) email (3) make public (4) send invitations (5) export ($) as movie or for use on iPod or iPhone
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COST? |
FREE |
FREE |
FREE |
FREE |
FREE IS LIMITED; subscribe monthly; 30 day free trial |
FREE - just one guy’ (Todd) so help requests should get quick answers |
FREE IS LIMITED; yearly subscription; (school pricing) |
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MEDIA OPTIONS |
- add audio directly from PPT |
- add rich media: text, images, videos, PDF. drawings - has autosave |
- preserves audio - preserves video with iSpring plugin |
-sync audio with slides; audio file must be hosted elsewhere |
-import PPT’s to slide library -image, flv, swf, gif - integrate Google Docs -tables & charts |
- import and edit PPT up to 2007, PDF, OpenOffice, Quicktime (mov) - add documentation (zip) |
- can copy an existing VT to reuse (if PRO) - media - doodle - can moderate/block comment(er)s |
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OTHER |
- although I ‘d love my kids to use this, it would be TOO SLOW to load in our school |
- graphical annotations |
- forum - widgets -- presentation pack; blog sidebar widget |
- slow buffering - probably too slow for our school; have not tested cached files |
- looks neat, but today PPT’s not loading; still a few hiccups? - NOW WORKING FINE |
- may not be able to use add video/audio comments unless you make tweaks to your computer. |
At this point I'll stick with SLIDEBOOM -- they provided me a lot of very quick help when my kids were working on their Earth Day Project last year and AUTHORSTREAM which is doing the PowerPoint for Peace project. When SLIDESIX is a little more stable I'll try them out as well. I'm working on a hands-on VOICETHREAD workshop, so next weekend's post offer details about its proclivities.
If you have corrections, additions, or personal experiences to add to my 'Slide-Somethings' table, please leave a comment. TTFN.
