Narrate your presentations with Movenote

Have you ever reviewed the slides from a presentation and wished you could hear "the rest of the story" behind each slide?  Giving a good presentation is truly an art form and any good presenter knows that less is more when it comes to each slide.  This, however, does not translate well when the slides are published online.  Some of the key points get lost without the narration and the charisma of the presenter is not available to add the extra emotion.  One possible solution would be to narrate your presentations first before posting them.  I recently learned about Movenote which could help fill this void.  Movenote is a Web-based tool that allows the user to import a variety of media (slide decks, documents, images, and other files), organize the materials, and then run through the presentation while recording audio and video of the presenter.  Even better, for Google Apps users, it integrates with your Google Drive.  The finished products can be shared to your favorite social media site or blog, sent via a link in an email, embedded into a webpage, and even downloaded as an mp4 video file.

Teachers could certainly make use of this tool to record their presentations and post them for their students to play later as a review, as a substitute for the "live" version if they were absent, or as a first-time viewing in a flipped classroom model.  Another idea for use in education would be to have students substitute live, in-class presentations that take up valuable time (unless the goal is to work on public speaking/presenting) with Movenote presentations and then have each student review the presentations and provide feedback on their own time.  Teachers could easily create a Google spreadsheet and share it with their students to add their URL's so they are all located in one place.  This process is even easier if the teachers have access to a tool like Hapara's Teacher Dashboard to share out the spreadsheet with all of their students.  A gentle reminder to the students that the revision history of the spreadsheet will show who changed the document and when should prevent any accidental or intentional tampering with the info.

This tool appears to work on most platforms, including Chromebooks.  Here's where you can get it:

• Website: http://www.movenote.com/
• Chrome App with Google Drive integration: http://goo.gl/c4fjYE
• Android App: http://goo.gl/ePdviG
• iOS App: http://goo.gl/9NmyJl

There are plenty of tutorials on the Movenote website for each platform.  Here is one specifically geared toward use on Chromebooks:

I'd love to hear about other uses for Movenote and other comparable tools.  Please comment below.

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