May 2004 — Product Watch
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Presentation Products
New and improved features abound in eZediaQTI 2.0 for Mac OS X (www.ezedia.com, 877-408-0195), which takes advantage of the new Panther OS and supports QuickTime 6. This multimedia authoring software program from eZedia includes a new interface, six free themed templates, and an automatic update feature that keeps the program updated at all times. Improved text functions allow for advanced formatting capabilities, including color, style and paragraph formatting with built-in spell check. The document window in eZediaQTI is also equipped with a ruler and grid for easy alignment. In addition, with this updated version of the application, users can edit and save default project settings.
The newest version of Mediasite (formerly Mediasite Live) by Sonic Foundry (www.sonicfoundry.com, 877-783-7987) helps teachers capture, encode, stream and archive their classroom presentations. Mediasite works by capturing data output from devices such as laptops, projectors, document cameras or electronic whiteboards in real time. This means that PowerPoint or Excel files, Web pages, video and images can be integrated into one live lecture, eliminating the need to prerecord lectures or presentations. Mediasite instantly synchronizes the various media with the instructor's audio and video, and then saves it for later Web streaming or on-demand archive viewing.
With Serious Magic's Visual Communicator software (www.seriousmagic.com) students and teachers can create digital presentations that have the look and feel of a TV newscast. The program enables K-12 students to create multimedia book reports, term papers, show-and-tell presentations, or news reports. Teachers can also use Visual Communicator to create video lesson plans instead of utilizing PowerPoint or Web pages. The software includes a teleprompter to help narrate the presentations; a library of templates, graphics, effects, backgrounds and music; a green-screen background for superimposing; and even a professional quality clip-on microphone. In addition, once presentations are completed, they can be published to the Web, burned to a CD or DVD, or saved as streaming video for the Internet.
C D & DVD PictureShow 2 Deluxe from Ulead Systems Inc. (www.ulead.com, 800-85-ULEAD) lets teachers and students create multimedia slide shows that incorporate images and photos with sounds and themes. The software suite includes two software titles: Photo Explorer 8 is the editing software used to find, edit and fix photos. It also allows users to organize their photos into virtual catalogs of image CDs. Once the images have been manipulated, teachers and students can then use PictureShow to create and burn photo slide shows onto CDs or DVDs. The software also comes with 70 holiday-themed templates that add creativity to any teacher lesson plans or student presentations.
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