I’ve been playing with Spresent this evening, something I have meant to do for a couple of weeks. Basically it’s like online PowerPoint, in fact it is being touted as a ‘buy’ for Google. I have blogged about SlideShare and the advantages of OpenOffice, but this is a wonderful little application.
It took me about an hour to get to grips with the interface, but after a steep learning curve, it’s relatively easy. It allows basic animations, transitions; but the beauty is the ability to integrate YouTube and Flickr with ease; sadly no function yet to upload your own desktop images. On the application menu, but not yet functional, seems to be the ability to record audio, add audio files and import your own PowerPoint files, which would make this the ultimate online presentation tool.
The finished presentation can be embedded into blogs or a website, alternatively you can have a html document emailed to you, when opened, this enables you to play the presentation via a viewer.
It looks like the site will also have the ability to export to swf files in the future.
I’ve produced a basic presentation which can be opened here, I’ve also produced another version below without video clips, because it seems to mess with a plugin and my blog template.
I can imagine students collectively working on a presentation with this application, something I may have a go at next term. Alternatively a presentation could be started, with students having to complete it or make adaptations to geographical misnomers, basically a bit of a remix, as suggested with Jumpcut by Noel Jenkins. Perhaps Stringy would like to be a little test case and write a report from a student viewpoint.
Yes, it could be constructed in PowerPoint, but this web 2.0 thingy is just so much fun, and how better to show that Geography is at the forefront of using new technologies…
At the moment it is free, but I imagine this may take off in the future, therefore additional payment may be needed for some features and hosting of large presentations.
One to watch over the coming months. 
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4 comments
Posted in Resources
Written on Sat, 16 December 2006 at 10:16 pm
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December 17th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
This looks great - thanks for sharing it. Can’t wait to have a play around with it. Ollie
December 17th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Yeap, I realy liked it, can the additional features should make it a really useful application in the classroom.
December 17th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
Send me an e-mail with more details and I’ll give it a go. Sounds pretty good.
-Stringy
December 17th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Just follow the link stringy and sign up for an account. It’s pretty easy and there are tutorials.