This was by far the most fun project I’ve completed in the EDTEC program, especially since it was about a topic that I was very interested in.

In order to complete all the requirements for this final presentation, I had to use some new software, which was very exciting to do, and learn especially at the last minute.

For the slide presentation, I used Apple iWork ‘08 Keynote.

I created an introductory movie as well in Keynote, but then exported it to Apple iMovie ‘08 because Keynote does not have the capability to lay down separate audio tracks. I needed to do this so I could have a music track playing in the background of my intro video.

To edit the music clip, I used a software called Wire Tap Studio by Ambrosia. I edited the clip using Wire Tap Studio, and then imported the clip into iMovie, and made some edits in iMovie as well. I then exported the movie, and then imported it into Keynote.

I wanted to capture a Flash animation from a web site, so I used Ambrosia’s Snapz Pro X to capture a selected area from my browser. I then imported this animation into Keynote.

Finally, I recorded my audio narration in Keynote. In Keynote you can record narrations on a slide by slide basis, but I found this to be cumbersome because it causes transition glitches when you stop and start recordings. Instead, I just recorded the narration from beginning to end, and just decided to live with the mistakes I made while speaking.

The movie export using Keynote did not work very well. The transitions and recorded timing of the narration did not export to QuickTime (.mov) properly. And forget about the Flash (.swf) export. There were too many error messages before exporting. So I went back to my trial version of Snapz Pro X and captured the presentation via View Recorded Slideshow in Keynote. Then I rendered the movie to 50% of its size, so hopefully it’s not too humongous and still large enough to read the text.

So I only have QuickTime format available. Please leave me a comment below if you would like to view the project. Now that it’s been graded already, I had to remove it from my web server because it was huge (~186 MB). I can send it to you via Pando. You should be able to view it on Windows or Mac using QuickTime Player or iTunes. Start the download, then go get a cup of coffee.  By the time you get back from coffee, the movie file should have finished downloading.  Enjoy!