Wired.com has lots of updates from CES 2010, the world’s largest consumer electronics convention. CES 2010 took place January 7-10 in Las Vegas. This year’s highlights included a transparent OLED display prototype from Samsung, shown in a video from the conference.
The New York Public Library’s Picture Collection uses a collaborative web-based discussion and presentation tool, VoiceThread, to show images from their collections to the public and to students in classrooms. VoiceThread allows users to make comments on presentations by webcam, computer microphone, text, or telephone. If leaving a comment by computer, users may also draw on an image to illustrate their opinions.
For more information about VoiceThread, click here.
Please note: to view these PowerPoint illustrations at a larger size, click on the images.
To create a simple Art History style PowerPoint 2008 theme, first open a new presentation. The Formatting Palette will appear on the right side; if it does not, click on the “Toolbox” icon from the menu bar. On the Formatting Palette, select Style 4, which is a black background with white text.
To ensure that any subsequent text added to the slide with a text box is formatted correctly (ie, in white font), create a “test” text box by selecting that icon from the menu bar.
Once you have created and tested the text box…
…you’re ready to save the slide theme. Select “Save Theme” from the Formatting Palette.
Select a name for your theme that will be recognizable to you later.
To apply your theme to any future presentation, select the “Slide Themes” tab.
Next, select the “Custom Themes” tab. You will then see your theme saved with the title you assigned. Click on its thumbnail and you’re set!
You can follow the above steps to save other types of Microsoft Office 2008 themes as well. If you have any questions, please contact the VRC.
Art History faculty can checkout a wireless SlimBlade™ Presenter Media Mouse with a Mac laptop. For instructions on how to use the mouse, please click here. A flash tutorial is also available.
The VLC Media Player is an open source multimedia player for various audio and video formats, as well as streaming video and DVDs. Free to download, it works well with both Macs and PCs. The media player includes a Snapshot feature (under the Video menu) which allows you to capture stills from video. Just pause at the suitable frame and take the snapshot. These snapshots may then be used in PowerPoint, Keynote, or OIV presentations.
For more information about the VideoLAN project (including the VLC Media Player), click here.
ArtsConnectEd, a joint project between the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center, launched in Beta on May 4, 2009.
The new ArtsConnectEd is completely redesigned as a dynamic and social Web site that empowers teachers, students, and museum educators in the creation and sharing of content and ideas in the process of learning about art.
The new Art Finder offers an intuitive and powerful interface to the combined collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) and Walker Art Center (WAC), encouraging both wide exploration and in-depth research. Users can browse over 90,000 works of art, watch and listen to more than 1,000 video and audio records, and read thousands of articles and object labels. All of these resources can be collected and arranged as interactive presentations for personal or classroom use, which can in turn be published for others to use. ArtsConnectEd also allows users to enhance their presentations with video and photos from services such as Flickr, YouTube, and the new ArtBabble video site.
If you are sure everything is connected correctly, and you have turned on the laptop only after everything else is connected and turned on, you may need to use a keyboard command to tell the laptop something is connected to its external output port. Below is a fairly comprehensive list of keyboard commands as provided by the manufacturers, compiled by Extron Electronics and edited by United Visual:
Are you using Powerpoint on a Mac? If so, you can easily load a folder of images into a presentation with just a few clicks. The VRC can install this simple program for you. Just contact us for more information.
Below is a list of software products recommended by Visual Resources Association (VRA) members for extracting, converting, and compressing clips from DVDs for your classroom presentations:
. . . make a PowerPoint presentation?
. . . create a high-quality digital image?
. . . find works of art in the VRC Collection?
. . . export a detail from Luna Insight?
. . . share a group of images in ARTstor?
The VRC can help you with all things related to digital imaging. Contact us to set up an appointment.