Articulate Presenter

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Articulate Presenter is a software application that lets you create Macromedia Flash presentations from a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

Articulate Presenter is more than a 'page-flipper, and does a good job of adding value to the presentation. It wraps the presentation in a player that can include controls, slide navigation pane, company or project logo, and even a photo of the presenter (if required - a nice touch if narration is used). This does mean that the presentation is typically displayed smaller than full-screen, so this needs to be taken into account when developing the source slides.

Slideshows can be fully-automated, although it is only possible to set a single 'slide speed' - which defaults to five seconds per slide - for the entire presentation. Options exist to allow the user to navigate through slides in the order they choose (typically, from the navigation pane) or only in the order in which they exist in the presentation.

By default, the navigation pane lists the slides in the presentation, using the slide title as the bookmark, which means that it is necessary to use PowerPoint template texts correctly (although slide titles can be changed on a per-slide basis). The navigation pane can also show slide thumbnails (with the slide title displayed below the slide), slide notes, or a search panel (allowing slides and/or notes to be searched). Individual slides can also be excluded from the navigation pane. Articulate Presenter provides a reasonable degree of customization, allowing the publisher to decide which screen elements and navigation tools to make available to the user. It is also possible to switch the view (for example, from full-screen to screen plus navigation pane) per slide.

Articulate Presenter supports many PowerPoint 'animations', allows voiceovers to be recorded, files (including video) to be attached, and hyperlinks to other content to be included. It is also possible to include 'learning games' (such as multiple choice questions, fill in the blanks word games, and so on). You can also include tests ('quizes') that have been created using the separate Articulate Quizmaker application.

It is possible to integrate OnDemand exercises into Articulate presentations, pushing the user with the user being pushed to an individual OnDemand simulation (in a single, chosen mode) simply by advancing to the next 'slide'. By setting the Articulate 'advance' option to 'automatic', and the OnDemand 'end' option to 'Back'the user automatically returns to the next slide after the simulation. This provides a clean, intuitive way of moving between the two types of content for self-paced learning.

The Presenter output can be run stand-alone (as a Flash presentation), or included in an LMS, such as Centra. Articulate Presenter is SCORM and AICC compliant. Presentations can also be published to Word.

Vendor website: www.articulate.com