LEEP students will no doubt want to know as much as they can about Elluminate technology so that their presentations go off without a hitch. So put your headsets and microphones on and get ready to run the audio set-up wizard yet again because it’s almost time to present your final projects for the Fall 2010 semester!
As a veteran LEEP GA I’ve seen many presentations in Elluminate, and It’s very easy to tell when a student has gone the extra mile in preparing their presentation for Elluminate. ITD and the Help Desk have many resources available to help LEEP students prepare.
First: ITD On-line Office Hours are a great way to ask questions about how your presentation will look from the audience’s perspective. Meet a LEEP GA in Elluminate at these times (Fall 2010 semester):
- Mondays, 12-1pm
- Tuesdays, 10-11am; 1-1:45pm
- Wednesdays, 1-3pm
- Thursdays, 11am-12pm
- Fridays, 11am-12pm
No reservation is needed to take advantage of these office hours and you can even email the GSLIS Help Desk (help@support.lis.illinois.edu) to set up a time that would fit your schedule better. More information can be found on the Moodle page as well as a link to join the meeting room.
Second: it is not uncommon to have questions or other special requests about your final presentation. You should email us if:
- You would like to reserve the Elluminate Meeting Room as a place to practice your presentation or collaborate on group work.
- You have questions about what Elluminate features (Whiteboard, Web Tour, Application Sharing) would work best for your presentation materials.
- Your presentation is in Powerpoint or Open Office format. Try to get your presentation to us as far in advance as possible so that we can convert it and have it ready to go. As a best practice you should attach your presentation to an email with your name and the section number of your class in the subject line.
Third: check out the Presenting in Elluminate ITD tutorial! It’s a great way to preview what the buttons look like that start an Application Share, Webtour, or advance Whiteboard slides. This is a great way to look at the Elluminate interface without actually logging in!
Finally: if you are in the midst of preparation I highly recommend reading this PDF handout about presenting in Elluminate. It covers some lesser known quirks about Elluminate. For example: after converting to whiteboard format, links in your Powerpoint or Open Office documents are no longer active and the audience will not be able to click on them to visit external websites. This is why it’s a good idea to have these links ready to paste in the chat so that you can push them to your audience. There are many caveats found in the handout, and I especially recommend reading it if you have decided to prepare your presentation with a service like Wix.com or Prezi.com, while these sites are great for creating visually stunning presentations, they don’t migrate well to Elluminate.
Questions or concerns should be be emailed to the GSLIS Help Desk (help@support.lis.illinois.edu).
Do you have other thoughts or opinions about Elluminate? Have you used other on-line collaboration tools for presentations? Be sure to sound off in the comments, and good luck with your final presentations!
