As a Rapid Intake Unison user you have always been able to create interactive activities, such as learning games and branching simulations using its rapid form-based template approach. Did you know you can also upload and convert PowerPoint presentations,including all animation, audio, and synchronization timing settings?
Rapid Intake Unison’s PowerPoint conversion tool allows you to easily take your existing PowerPoint presentations and leverage them in new and exciting ways. You can lay out, animate, and even record audio inside your PowerPoint – then upload it to Rapid Intake Unison with just one button click. Each slide is instantly converted into a high-quality Flash animation. Here’s how to get the job done.
NOTE: Rapid Intake Unison supports converting PowerPoint 2000, 2003, and 2007.
TIP: Rapid Intake Unison will convert audio as long as the audio is embedded in the PowerPoint. By default, PowerPoint “links” rather than “embeds” audio. The exception to this is narrated audio. If you narrate directly in PowerPoint, PowerPoint will embed the narrated audio. If you import audio into PowerPoint, PowerPoint links to the file rather than embeds it. To make sure PowerPoint embeds your audio, find the Max Sound File Size setting and increase it to 50,000.
Getting started: record narration within PowerPoint
Before uploading your PowerPoint, you may want to record narration. You can do this easily right within PowerPoint.
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Open the PowerPoint presentation and, in the Slide Show ribbon, click Record Narration (you can easily adapt these PowerPoint 2007 instructions to earlier versions).
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Adjust the microphone level and other settings, and then click OK.
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Narrate the PowerPoint presentation with a computer microphone (headset mike is recommended) and click through the slides as you would in front of a live audience (this starts any animations you may have as well as synchronizes them with your narrative audio).
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When finished, press the ESC key. PowerPoint asks if you want to save the slide timings. Click Save.
You’re now ready to upload the narrated file to Rapid Intake Unison.
Uploading the narrated file
Once you have opened the Rapid Intake Unison authoring environment, follow these steps:
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Click the Add Multiple SWFs button. (This is the bottom button on the left in Figure 1.)
Figure 1. Uploading a file begins here.
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In the Media category, click PowerPoint to see a list of PowerPoint presentations that you have already uploaded to the Media Manager. (See Figure 2.) You can use an already converted PowerPoint presentation or upload a new one.
Figure 2. These are the PowerPoint presentations already loaded into the Media Manager.
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To upload and convert a new PowerPoint click Upload new PowerPoint (Figure 3), browse for your PowerPoint file, then click Upload Files.
Figure 3. This begins the process of uploading and converting a PowerPoint file.
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Rapid Intake Unison uploads and begins converting the PowerPoint file. (Figure 4) For small files it’s very fast. For larger files it can take some time. If you don’t want to wait for conversion to complete, simply exit and Rapid Intake Unison will e-mail you when the PowerPoint conversion is finished.
Figure 4. This icon indicates that Rapid Intake Unison has started converting your file.
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After the PowerPoint finishes converting, simply click the Add All Slides button (Figure 5) to insert each page of your PowerPoint presentation as a separate page to your course.
Figure 5. Use this button to insert each page of your PowerPoint presentation as a separate page in your course.
TIP: Remember, don’t stop there! You’ve heard of “Death by PowerPoint”? PowerPoint alone can be poison. You can add lots of other interactive activities such as games, quizzes, soft-skill simulations and more, interspersed with your PowerPoint slides.
