Tutorial 2: How to use Camtasia Studio 7

Welcome to my second tutorial blog. Today I am going to talk about recording your PowerPoint presentation with Camtasia Studio 7. This program is very easy to use and it allows you to record audio as well as video presentations. It was a helpful tool in preparing the Presentation Project for this course.

First of all you need to get the program. You can either buy it online or get a 30 days free test version. I chose the free test version, as it was sufficient for preparing the project. However, as the program is really helpful and easy to use I could imagine buying it.

You just have to go on: http://www.techsmith.com/download/trials.asp and select download.

Then you have to enter your email address and select “Download now”. Next you have to install the program which is very self-explanatory. After doing this you can directly start with recording your presentation. (As a hint, you have to prepare your presentation beforehand with PowerPoint)

A nice thing with Camtasia is that it is actually possible to put it in your add-in toolbar of PowerPoint. Either it does it automatically or you have to open Camtasia Studio and then click on “ToolsàOptionsàPowerPoint Tabàand enable the PowerPoint Add In Button”. Now it should work. To check it you open your PowerPoint Presentation and if you have Office 2007 or higher the recording button should appear directly below your “Office Button in the PowerPoint presentation. It should look like this:

The first button controls whether audio is recorded or not. The second button control video. So you decide if you want only and audio presentation or an audio video presentation or just a video presentation. To make sure on your video presentation is everything you want to see, you can use the camera preview button next to the video button to adjust it. You can further customize your settings with the recording options button. There you can select your microphone, the volume which you want to record and many more. Click ok to save your settings. Now you are ready to record your presentation!

To record the presentation, you click on the record button in the toolbar. Now the presentation will start pauses, so you have time to prepare. A window appears on the bottom right corner where you can finally start your presentation. Click on” Click to begin recording” to start. You now just present your presentation as you normally would do. At the end of your presentation you click on “Stop recording” in the appearing window to finish your presentation. Now you choose a destination on your computer where you will save your presentation. Name your file and then click on “Produce your recording” in the appearing window. You also have the possibility for editing your project but I will not explain this in this tutorial.

Your final step should be to produce and share the video or presentation you did. To do this you have to click on the “Produce and Share” button in your Camtasia Studio.

On the first page of the Production menu you have several opportunities in the drop down menu how you want to produce your video. You can make an MP4 file out of it, directly share it on YouTube or Secreencast.com( a WEB 2.0 tool).

It’s up to you what you want to do with your video. Finally click on finish to rendering you video. That’s all you have to do. So thank you for visiting my blog and I hope to see you next time.

Sources:

Screenshots of Camtasia on my on PC.

Presentation and Web 2.0 Project

Hey everyone, this is my blog about my presentation project. First of all I would like to say that it was a valuable experience to prepare the presentation. I really liked that there were plenty of opportunities you could choose from. I decided to do a presentation about a non-governmental, no-profit organization, “The Power of Love foundation”. They basically try to fight the HIV epidemic in underdeveloped countries like Zambia, Kenya and India.

I think I’ve learned a lot during this project. Beginning the presentation with a storyboard was new for me, as I was used to start directly with preparing my slides. However, it was really helpful in preparing the presentation, as the structure was already set. That’s why I think my presentation has a logical sequence and flow of content. Regarding the questions part I think it was quite difficult to post them. I tried to manage the content of my presentation in that ways that it leaves no questions open. By putting a video in the beginning that showed the problems in Zambia or Africa in general I tried to grab the attention of the audience. I think I managed that quite well. The program I used in preparing the video was new to me. That’s why you sometimes hear some clutter. In total, I think the amount is quite ok and it is not disturbing the presentation. I think I could improve the sound of my voice a little bit, because it is quite silent. It is really difficult to present something and no one is in front of you. So that’s why I prefer live presentations.

By evaluating another presentation you get a feeling of what it means to grade a presentation. I think this is valuable. First of all, you see the nice work of other students. Second of all, you are able to judge their presentations because you know that it is a lot of work to get a final presentation of 10min content. Finally, it makes it easier for you to reflect on your presentation style. See my presentation below.

As already said, I learned a lot during this project. Especially the use of the Web.2.0. tools and the video recording of my PowerPoint was new to me. I think I can use it during business life very often. If you work for a multinational company and you have to convince people in a subsidiary on another continent, the use of these tools is really helpful. It also allows watching the presentation more than once. This may be a tool for training purposes. You could make a training presentation for interns or new employees, so they can watch it when they need it.

Here is my link to the Web 2.0 post:

The Power of Love Foundation

That’s all I can say about this valuable project. Thank you very much for reading my blog.

Excel Project

The excel projects intention was mainly to apply the skills we learned during the Excel Scavenger Hunt. So the use of basic excels formatting and functions as well as Pivot tables.

In the first task we had to work on the given data and create new useful cells with the help of excel functions.  I made the first two rows bold and centered the gender column. In addition I froze the first two rows, as it makes it more convenient to scroll through the data.

After that I created several new cells that provide new data information.

·         Maximum Heart Rate (Max HR)

·         Target Heart Rate (Tgt HR)

·         Highest Heart Rate Achieved ( Highest HR)

·         Target Achieved (Tgt Achieved)

·         Heart Rate Increase (PctIncreaseHR)



Excel Sheet

With these new data it is now possible to give more informative information about the effectiveness of the new workout in the fitness center. To print these data, the printing layout had to be adjusted to make it fit to one page. In addition headings and footers where included for a professional look.

Pivot table

After that I created two Pivot tables which allow making analysis of different relations between data. As you can see in the table below, I separated the data into three age groups and then in male and female. The table clearly shows that the group 20-29 years and female has the highest “Heart Rate Increase” and the group 40-49 female the lowest. 

Overall this exercise should prepare us for the daily business in a company, where you often work with Excel. Especially the Pivot table function can save you a lot of time as you can quickly create new tables.