Tweet Create rich interactive lessons with Microsoft Office-MIX

Microsoft is quickly changing and adapting to rapidly changing user behavior and requirements. Last year saw two products from Mircosoft, Sway (competes with Prezi) and Office-Mix (competes with Adobe Presenter, Articulate) launched possibly to save people from death by PowerPoint.

Microsoft Office-Mix is a free PowerPoint Add-in that lets you tell your story with audio, video, annotations, screen recording and interactive element. It helps educators create interactive lessons with slides, media, quizzes and polls. In addition to all these cool features which are otherwise paid in other such Add-ins, Office-Mix provides rich analytics and online sharing.


Though Sway and Office-Mix both are not a new idea, yet it is surely going to be a bliss for educators who will not have to rely on paid software for creation of interactive synchronized lessons. Here is a Mix explaining open number lines-

Tweet Free PowerPoint add-in to record lectures for flipped classroom and courses

WizIQ, an education platform that connects teachers and students online has released a free PowerPoint add-in called WizIQ Recordor. WizIQ Recordor lets teachers create video lectures (MP4) for offline consumption by students. Teachers can record their live audio along with PowerPoint slides and can either share video link with their students or add the video to their online course.

Recordor is an easy-to-use authoring tool that creates synchronized video lectures. The only disadvantage it has is that teachers can only record their audio and not their video(from webcam) or any pre-recorded audio or video file. Adding a functionality to let teachers sync any audio or video file with slides to create a synchronized video lecture would be a great thing to do since this functionality is missing in PowerPoint as well.


 

Tweet Insert Vimeo, Youtube videos in PowerPoint slides with authorSTERAM Desktop 2.0

authorSTREAM the online presentation sharing platform has released the second version of their free PowerPoint add-in called authorSTREAM Desktop. As compared to authorSTREAM Desktop 1.0 which was launched almost two years back, the latest version lets you search and insert videos from Vimeo in addition to YouTube. It also lets you search images from Flickr and Bing right from within the PowerPoint.

Most amazing thing which authorSTREAM has done is its advance search and filters. authorSTREAM not only allows you to search images on different parameters like color, size or type but also on the basis of  licensing information. You can search creative commons stuff from Flickr and that too without leaving the PowerPoint. authorSTREAM also inserts the attribution text in the slides along with the images to help users get rid of some of the copyright worries.You can also create a collection of selected images or videos to be used later in the slides.



authorSTREAM Desktop with the addition of more video and image search APIs should help PowerPoint users create effective presentation with just few clicks.

Tweet Free Add-ins for PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint software is rich enough in features and functionally and fulfill almost all needs of PowerPoint users. However, there are few  use cases  which Microsoft has missed. Thankfully, there are few free or moderately priced Add-ins or Plug-ins available from Microsoft MVPs or independent software venders which will make your PowerPoint creation experience more enjoyable and hassle free.

Narration Timing Tweaker
PowerPoint's narration tool offers an easy feature to record audio narration to go along with the slide show. However, if you need to fine tune any of the event times in the recorded show, you have to redo the whole slide again. Narration Timing Tweaker is a free add-in which eliminates that need altogether.

Fotolia Ribbon
With Fotolia PowerPoint add-in you can instantly add high-resolution photos, vectors, and illustrations using your free Fotolia account without leaving PowerPoint. You can Insert royalty free images in PowerPoint slides using Fotolia's PowerPoint add-in.

Insert web pages in PowerPoint slides with PowerPoint Web Browser Assistant
PowerPoint Web Browser Assistant addin assists you in inserting live web pages on slides on your presentation. It uses Microsoft Internet Explorer to display the web pages.

PptPlex
Microsoft's lab product pptPlex is the coolest PowerPoint add-in which lets you give presentations in a quite astonishing way.

Embed media
Microsoft Office PowerPoint does not provide a way to embed video and audio files (with a small exception that you can embed small .wav files). OfficeOne ProTools Embed Media works around that limitation and allows you to embed media files into the presentation. Since the media files are within the presentation, you no longer have to worry about breaking links to the external video files when you move or copy the presentation. PowerPoint will play your files as it would normally do. OfficeOne ProTools Embed Media is not required for playing the video and audio files.

Microsoft Producer
Microsoft Producer allows you to get an existing presentation file, capture and synchronize video and audio narration, add additional media content, and produce a unified set of content ready for viewing in a browser on your intranet , on the web or on a DVD.

Add progress bar with Thermometer
Adding a progress bar to your PowerPoint will let  your audience know at any given point that how much has been covered and how much still left. Thermometer for PowerPoint is a free add-in from Indezine that creates a thermometer style bar in the bottom area of the slide that shows how much of a presentation has progressed and how much more is remaining.

YouTube Video Wizard (YTV)
YTZ wizard lets you easily  insert YouTube videos into a PowerPoint slide. All you need to do is to provide the YouTube video URL that appears in the browser address bar, the rest is taken care of by the YTV Wizard.

Mouse Mischief
Mouse Mischief integrates into Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, letting you insert questions, polls, and drawing activity slides into your lessons.

Students can actively participate in these lessons by using their own mice to click, circle, cross out, or draw answers on the screen.

Flashback PowerPoint Add-in to rewind Flash movies in PowerPoint automatically
FlashBack will rewind the Flash movies inserted using the Shockwave Flash control automatically. Click here to read more and download.

authorSTREAM Desktop
authorSTREAM desktop lets you search and insert YouTube videos and images in your PowerPoint file from within PowerPoint.

authorPOINT Lite
authorPOINTTM Lite is a free PowerPoint to Flash Converter for converting PowerPoint files in Flash. authorPOINT Lite also lets you share your presentations online on the web through authorSTREAM.

iSpring
Similar to authorPOINT Lite, iSpring is a free PowerPoint to Flash converter which can handle animation effects, slide transitions, audio narrations, video and Flash objects in output.

Slide Finder
SlideFinder Add-in for PowerPoint 2007  lets you search the web for presentations and slides from within PowerPoint.

This is not the comprehensive list of free add-ins for PowerPoint. You can find more information about add-in and other PowerPoint resources at links below:


http://officeone.mvps.org/products.html
http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/links.html#addin