Breeze Presentation: Pilot phase at UW Madison

Breeze Presentation was chosen and is currently being used by UW-Madison. This tool is free for UW Madison facutly or instructional support staff who have a timetable course.

If you are interested in the Breeze pilot. You will have access to publish PowerPoint presentations to a web based Flash format with or without audio. Please contact us for training and an account at ltde@doit.wisc.edu

A pilot means that we depend upon feedback from you to assess the value of the product.  It also means that we will be working out some of the bugs and we want you to inform us of trouble areas you run across.

At the end of the semester, Fall 2004 and Spring 2005, will also be looking for good examples (showcases) of how Breeze was used on the UW Madison campus.

Learning Solutions a division within Academic Technology at UW Madison highly recommends Articulate for those who need a customized learner interface or to allow for more interactivity. Learning solutions often uses Articulate when contracted to do a completely online courses. Articulate could have easily been chosen for our campus, however Breeze Presentation has a lower price per customer cost in the model we have chosen to deploy this kind of tool.

Breeze Presentation-Macromedia

Breeze Student Objective

If the faculty's goal is to provide students with their narrative presentation and flash animations showing concepts and/or short video's demonstrating tasks then Breeze would be the tool to select.

Strengths

• Early Majority Faculty
• Ease of use
• Does everything, video, narration, flash animation
• Video
• Narration
• Flash Animation
• PC & MAC platform
• Produces very small files for a progressive download
• Server version, no need to transfer files to web or streaming server
• No streaming server needed, produces flash progressive download
• PowerPoint "Notes" included & excellent navigation
• Could easily be used as non-narrative tool

Weakness

• No continuous video of presenter along with script
• Not accessible for screen readers
• Third party video compression tool needed to convert video to swf format
• Early adopter tool if video is used
• Cost of server version cost $9,750, price as of Aug 2003

Breeze Comments

Breeze Presentation cost around $10,000 for 200 simultaneous users (faculty authoring), and requires Breeze Server software with the minimum hardware specifications:

• Pentium III processor (733MHz or greater)
• 512 MB of RAM
• CD-Rom Drive
• Windows 2000 Server or Professional
• Microsoft PowerPoint XP
• 1 GB of hard disk space for Breeze Server basic installation
• 10 GB of hard disk space per 100 presentations

Simultaneous users at any given time no more than 200 faculty can publish a presentation. For example, 10,000 accounts could be given out with 200 faculty publishing a presentation simultaneous.

Articulate

Articulate Student Objective

If the faculty's goal is to provide students with their presentation and an audio script that goes along with the presentation this tool could be recommended.

Articulate Presenter is a PowerPoint to Flash conversion utility that allows instructors to integrate narration, animation and interactivity into any PowerPoint presentation for on-demand delivery via the Web. After installation, Articulate Presenter becomes part of PowerPoint's pull-down menu structure. The Articulate menu options enable instructors to add narration to individual slides by importing sound files or recording live narration with a microphone. You can then synchronize narration with PowerPoint's animation effects as well as import Flash movies and other web objects into individual slides. Articulate Presenter also comes with built-in interactive objects such as simple quizzing and gaming activities that can be integrated anywhere into a presentation. Instructors can also customize the user interface that students will see as they access presentations on the Web. This includes setting-up navigational controls, a slide index list and adding attachments and hyperlinks to the presentation.

Learning Solutions a division within Academic Technology at UW Madison highly recommends this tool. Learning solutions often uses Articulate when contracted to do completely online courses.

Strengths

• Most intuitive application
• Good for completely online course
• Narration
• Customizable user interface
• Ease of use PowerPoint "Notes" included, excellent navigation, thumbnails and download file section
• Allows for interaction
• Allows for non linear navigation of slides

Weakness

• 56k modem speed connection significant delays between slides

Articulate Comments

Whoever designed this product was paying attention to the needs of instructors and learners. If your course web site already incorporates Flash elements, then Articulate Presenter allows you to get the most from your Flash assets. There is no need to create passive PowerPoint presentations for the web. Articulate presenter enables you to convert a series of PowerPoint slides into an interactive learning experience. You may no longer need to use Real, QuickTime and Windows Media streaming to deliver illustrated audio lectures. This is an excellent product that is not only fun and easy to use but also highly functional. If most of your users access the web via high speed connections, then Articulate is the way to go. If you develop short presentations then it may even work well for dial-up users. But expect some significant delays between slides. We encourage you to download the free demo version and check out this incredibly well designed application.

Impatica Desktop Software

Impatica Student Objective

If the faculty's goal is to provide students with their short narrative presentation with or without short videos then Impatica would be the tool to select. (video's such as task demonstration, short clips of the lecturer or guest speakers)

Strengths

• Early Majority Faculty
• Video
• Narration
• Student's view both on PC & MAC platform
• No third party video compressor tool needed
• Ease of use
• Could easily be used as non-narrative tool (non-narrative means no audio script)
• Low cost $299, Price as of Aug 2003
• Only tool that allows authoring on a Macintosh (OSX)

Weakness

• No Flash animation conversion
• No continuous video of presenter along with script
• Lack of students, (learner interface) controls, no notes, no easy navigation
• Must set file extension settings on D2L server for more details

Impatica Comments

At the time of this reveiw it cost $299 and we received very good support from the company as well as good ratings on many of the criteria's investigated. It runs well on both the Macintosh and PC and would need no player from the viewers end. The player, plus only two other files are loaded to the web server (Desire2Learn) by the author. The narrative and non-narrative are both easy and straightforward. Faculty can author on both PC and MAC OSX. Site licensing available upon request from Impatica.

Microsoft Producer or eTEACH Desktop Versions

Student Objective

If the faculty's goal is to provide students with their narrative presentation and a video of the presenter and wants a FREE product, then one of these tools can be used.

Strengths

• Good for completely online course
• Continuous video of presenter
• Narration
• PowerPoint "Notes" included & excellent navigation
• Very accessible to screen readers
• Free
• eTEACH has local support

Weakness

• Early adopter tool, (tool often used when support staff available to do the conversions)
• PC only platform
• Difficulty with Microsoft Producer getting avi file into correct video format for conversion
• No Flash animation conversion
• No "other" video along with presenter video, but could replace "presenter" video

Microsoft Producer or eTEACH Comments

Both are free but ease of use is not rated very high in our evaluation. Microsoft Producer at this time is easier to use than eTEACH, however, eTEACH has local support at this time on the UW Madison campus. UW Whitewater uses eTeach set up at a central machine with support available. This cannot be recommended for student's who need to view the presentation from a Macintosh.