How to use the Presenter

The Hughes Presenter Tools

When you install Hughes Presenter a new tool tab will appear on your Powerpoint program. Clicking on the Hughes Presenter tab will provide you with a new set of tools – these can be seen in the image below. The three tools which will be covered in this introductory session have been indicated on the image.

Getting to know the demo presentation

• Open the demo Powerpoint presentation. Instructions on where to locahte this file will be provided by your instructor.
• Display the presentation as a slide show... Click the Slide show tab and click From beginning.
• Work through the presentation in the normal way to get a feel for how the presentation appears (use the space key, right arrow or mouse click to advance slides/animations).
  

Getting Ready to Record Audio

The first thing you need to do is plug your headset microphone into your computer. Both your computer and headset will probably be marked with icons for the audio jacks and sockets...

... So, plug the headset into the appropriate sockets on the computer.

Recording Levels: When you come to record your narration you may need to adjust recording levels on your computer – to boost the sound of your voice without causing too much hiss.

Recording Audio

We will now add some audio to the slides in the demo presentation...

1. Click the Hughes presenter tab.
2. Click ‘record audio’. The ‘record audio’ palette will appear (see below).

First of all we will add some narration to the title slide. You can either read out exactly what it says on screen or you may wish to elaborate a little...

1. Put on the head set microphone.
2. Click the Record narration button.
3. Speak into the microphone – say what you would like to be heard over the title slide.
4. When you have finished click the Stop button.
5. To review your recording, click the Play button.
6. If you are happy with your recording, click the Save button.
7. If you are not happy with it, click the Record narration button and start the process again.

We will now add some narration to the content slides of the presentation. The two content slides in the demo presentation contain some basic animations – text/images appearing rather than all displayed at once. You can use the Next animation button on the record tool to advance animations.

1. Click the Next slide button – the first of the content slides should appear.
2. Click the Record narration button and speak aloud the title of the slide.
   
3. Click the Next animation button. The next piece of text/image in the slide will appear. Speak out your narration for this text/image.
   
4. Continue to click Next animation and continue speaking until you get to the end of the slide (at which point the Next animation button will turn into Finish slide).
   
5. Click the Stop button.
6. (the Finish slide button would take you onto the next slide).
   
7. Review your narration – click the Play button.
   
8. If you are happy with your recording, click the Save button.
9. If you are not happy with it, click the Record narration button and start the process again.

Now do the same for the third slide...

1. Start by clicking the Next slide button.
2. When you have finished recording all of the narration for the presentation, close down the record tool pallet by clicking the Close button.
3. You will then return to the main Powerpoint screen.
4. At any point you can go back into a particular slide to re-record the narration.

Saving your presentation with narration

In the main Powerpoint screen, save your presentation in the normal way. On your hard drive you will find that a new folder has been created with the name of your presentation followed by ‘_assets’. All of your audio files are stored in this folder.

Publishing your presentation in a web-friendly format

This is the final stage of preparing your presentation for web based delivery. Here are some default settings normally used when publishing a Hughes presentation.

1. Click the Hughes presenter tab.
2. Click the Publish button. The Publish presentation dialogue box will appear.
   
3. There are a number of options that can be changed here – more information on options will be provided at the end of this document, but for now, go with the following default options:
   • Title: The default title for the presentation will be the filename of the Powerpoint presentation – if you are using the example tutorial presentation, then the title will be ‘Hughes_demo_pres’. You can change this if you wish – but try to keep the name short and avoid using spaces or punctuation. A folder will be created with this name, containing all the published files you need.
     
   • Player skin: Shadow Glass
     
   • Label theme: English
     
   • LMS tracking: None (this controls the SCORM settings of any quizs created. This should allow a quiz in a presentation to 'communicate' with the Grade Centre of Blackboard. At present we are investigationg how best to get this to work correctly. For the moment you may wish to simply select None for this setting)
     
   • Layout: Normal
     
   • Location: You need to specify where you want the published output to be saved – click the Folder button to the right of the location text box and browse your computer to find a suitable place to save – e.g. in the same location as your Powerpoint presentation.
     
   • Other options: For the moment, make sure that ‘save output in a zip file’ is NOT selected and two options below are unselected as well.
4. Then click the Publish button and all of your presentation files will be created.
5. When the conversion has been completed, you will get the option to View presentation.
6. Click this button and your new web-friendly presentation will open up in your web browser.
7. Give a quick run through to check it works properly.

Page last updated 24 October 2012

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