Adobe Connect - Virtual Classes

Here is my list of topics covered in the University of Washington - Department of Nursing Connect demo. The session audience is media support staff.

Must have an adobe login to see these on-demand archives.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=set_registered&id=1474214&loc=en_us

Big ideas for me are the Wacom Cintiq display/tablet, mobile Connect carts, USB light snake

Fast forward to
3:56 for the agenda – video conferencing – traditional to Connect (audio)
4:38 - 2 electronic classrooms for nursing
5:18 – campus infrastructure funding used to upgrade video-based
6:58 – our tech eval process & solution review
Goals - Screen sharing, share documents, give presentation rights, ease of use +
9:35 – Connect supports dial-up for worldwide audience (14.4Kbs) so this audience stops video and syncs the PPT slides
10:50 – remote service – end users upload files then UW doctor reviews in common session
11:40 – screen sharing – two video feeds – operations center for multi-cameras in classroom PLUS presenter feed
12:55 – multiple audio mic sources (PCM mics for audience)
14:29 – classroom shot – small – 20 students
15:02 – presenter’s monitor to a feed (mirroring effect not typical) - no visual
15:38 - screen sharing with whiteboard tools over top , move mouse around – no visual
16:28 – Wacom Cintiq display is a monitor and graphics tablet (SMART CLASSROOM & ITV CLASSROOMS)
18:00 – more on Cintiq display — see http://www.wacom.com/index2.php for details
18:45 – funding for classroom tech
19:40 – location of control room – be
19:58 – mobile capture cart details – classroom or remote locations, multi mics, Canon GL2 camcorder
21:00 – immediate release of event by URL without post production work
21: 16 – classroom camera shot (audio on another topic)
21:38 – control room operator skill set
23:19 – connect prefers digital audio input- xlr to shure not as good
23:47 – convert analog audio to digital with USB light snake (???) makes for superior Connect audio
24:29 – more than using just a web cam for audio

And more, but this much covers the big ideas, next steps and conversations I need to have with Media Services.

Cintiq display - http://www.wacom.com/index2.php

Powerpoint - On a Diet - Redux

Cheryl Chan (Dental Hygiene) stopped by to compress the two Powerpoint files full of 35 mm slide images she scanned last summer. I had established a high resolution scan setting for her, and a Photoshop batch process to make the images ready for adding to Powerpoint. The batch process is easy to forget. The high res images are 40 MB + each and 40 images in one presentation will cause a laptop to meltdown. No, not really, but a presentation with large images is not very responsive.

Our discovery is that Powerpoint 2004 on a Macintosh computer does not have a Toolbar > Picture > Compress function like the Windows version. So after compressing for web/screen the 400 MB presentation file became a 2 MB file. WOW.

Another way to compress presentations is to convert them to Acrobat (PDF) files. Sometimes just converting saves space, the 400 MB ppt file became a 150 MB pdf file. But Acrobat can compress files using the Advanced > PDF Optimizer function and dropped the file to 2.5 MB.

PDF files are ideal when adding to D2L - Desire2Learn or any other learning management system.