MeetingPlace iCreate - Page 2

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Benchmarking iCreate
Using SmartObjects
Using Narration

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Benchmarking iCreate

We'll now put iCreate through the PowerPoint repurposing benchmark - this is a sample presentation that incorporates several presentation elements - here's how iCreate fared:

You need to be aware that this benchmark only takes conversion factors into consideration - not managing and administrating repurposed content. Also, iCreate offers workarounds for several shortcomings like inserting video content - however, the purpose of this benchmark is to use a conventional PowerPoint presentation.

Using SmartObjects

iCreate allows you to insert extra elements into a presentation - something that PowerPoint does not offer natively. Amazingly, these elements work even if you don't convert your PowerPoint content to rich media using iCreate.

This means that your trial version of iCreate will allow you to insert Flash content within PowerPoint with one-click - iCreate also includes an extensive quiz and survey module (see screenshots) - these work within PowerPoint as well.

However, it's only when these SmartObjects are converted to rich media that you can understand their full potential.

Once you have inserted SmartObjects, you can edit and animate them as well using PowerPoint's native Custom Animation feature.

Michael adds:

One thing that may be a little less obvious is that SmartObjects can send response automatically to the iCreate Server. So after publishing to the server, simply send an invitation to one or more people and their responses to quizzes, surveys, etc. are recorded in the database for immediate or archival viewing.

Using Narration

Narration plays a significant role since most of the rich media content created with tools like iCreate is viewed online without a live presenter. iCreate allows you to record narrations using a fairly capable audio editor that's included within the application.

The audio editor can import or export recorded sounds so that you can do more fine-tuning in an advanced sound editing application.

Having said that, iCreate's greatest advantage is that it's narration component itself is entirely compatible with PowerPoint's own narration and Insert | Sound feature unlike Macromedia Breeze which insists on importing pre-narrated content again through its own interface - ignoring all sounds contained within native PowerPoint presentations.

iCreate however does not recognize transition sounds - that's unfortunate.

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