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Screencasts, Narrated Powerpoints, Multimedia

In addition to our traditional audio and video recording capabilities, the Media Production area of Instructional Technologies and Multimedia Services (ITMS,) continues to provide support of various other types of instructional media tools and technologies.

For further details about these and other services, contact Scott Charles (jscharle@uwaterloo.ca) x36784, Dianne Naughton (dnaughto@uwaterloo.ca) x38319, Orest Dorkowsky (owdorkow@uwaterloo.ca) x38320, or Alan Kirker (abkirker@uwaterloo.ca) x37109.

If you are a UW instructor and have questions or require assistance with issues relating to educational media in the broader context of curriculum, learning design, and accessibility, we maintain contacts within the Centre for Teaching Excellence, the Centre for Extended Learning (formerly Distance Education), the Library, and in the Office for Persons with Disabilities (OPD).

Accessibility

We provide consulting in terms of making instructional media accessible, and advise on current best practices. Whether it is obtaining transcription or captioning services, providing media in alternate formats, or making instructional content available to students with various sensory or learning impairments, we work with our contacts in the Office for Persons with Disabilities (OPD), the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE), the Office of Extended Learning (OEL) and the Library to provide assistance and support in this area.

Hardware

The ITMS production facilities make use of high quality recording devices and microphones. We also have microphones and recording devices that can be signed out by instructors through our equipment stores, if you wish to make recordings in your own office or classroom. Contact: Dwight Schmidt (de2schmi@uwaterloo.ca) x33257, Tammi Beaulieu (tsmbeaul@uwaterloo.ca) x33034, to make arrangements.

Recording Space

The production facilities in ITMS include a special sound-dampened recording studio that can be booked to make your recordings in, either on your own, or with the supervision and assistance of one of our skilled media producers.

Software and Production

We continue to support software that can be used to create educational media resources. If there is a particular challenge you are facing in terms of your instructional content, or are interested in using a piece of software that is not mentioned here, please let us know and we will investigate!

Camtasia™ (pc/mac) - (view a sample) Camtasia not only enables audio narration of PowerPoint™ slides, but the capture of cursor movement on the computer desktop screen and embedded "picture in picture" (e.g. video talking head). This is extremely useful in providing recorded demonstrations of various types of software and desktop applications. Resulting files can be uploaded to UW-ACE (or most web servers) and played in any up-to-date web browser.

ProfCast™ (pc/mac) - (view a sample of an ipod-tuned narration) Commonly played through iTunes™ or QuickTime™, ProfCast can record PowerPoint™ slides and create a narrated slideshow with "chaptered intervals", also known as an enhanced podcast or audiobook. Resulting files (m4a, m4b, .mov) are iTunes compatible and can also be uploaded to UW-ACE (or most web servers).

Presenter™ (pc) - (view a sample) is specifically for narrating PowerPoint™ on the PC. The resulting file is an Adobe™ .swf file that can be uploaded to UW-ACE (or most web servers) and played in any up-to-date web browser.

And more!