09/02/2014
Office Mix is a PowerPoint plug-in that allows teachers and students to easily create recorded online (or offline) PowerPoint presentations. The Mix presentations can be saved as MP4 video files or they can be uploaded to Office Mix servers in the cloud for a more interactive experience. This is an easy to use tool that all teachers should learn more about, especially those interested in flipping their classroom with pre-recorded lessons.
A couple of weeks ago I created and uploaded my first Office Mix. Since I was already familiar with PowerPoint the learning curve was small. I had explored Office Mix in the Spring but as with most things you do not truly understand the complete system until you actually produce something from start to finish. I see tremendous potential for this tool in education for both online and F2F learning.
My first Office Mix ended up being about 10 minutes long, not including a 5 minute embedded YouTube video demonstration of using wireless video in the classroom. I chose the topic of Miracast Wireless Video in the Classroom as I have had much interest from fellow teachers and presenters. Since my ability to present face-to-face is limited I thought this topic would be of universal interest and a good example to share with other teachers and presenters.
Here is a breakdown of my first Office Mix:
Slide 1 – Title Slide with talking head video of me in the upper right-hand corner introducing the topic. Having a webcam introduction allows students to put a face with the presenter. I am a bit camera shy but this video introduction sets the stage for the presentation and puts a human face with it.
Slide 2 – What is Miracast? In this slide I used the traditional tried and true bullet points to introduce the topic. I used animation to have each bullet point appear as I discussed it and added voice-over commentary to each point.
Slide 3 – Miracast Receivers. In this slide I provided an overview of miracast receivers that we use and I also added a clickable URL in the slide to take you to a previous blog post that provides more detail for those interested. Having the ability to hyperlink within an online presentation to a webpage makes it easy for the learner to explore more if interested.
Slide 4 – Benefits of Miracast for Teachers. For this slide I again used the animated bullet points introduced one-by-one. I also used the annotation inking tool to demonstrate that you can easily annotate over the slide using digital ink drawing attention to important points. By the way, the Surface Pro Windows 8 tablet with digital pen is a natural fit for this type of annotation.
Slide 5 – I embedded a five minute YouTube video in Slide 5 that allows the viewer to click on the video and see a real-life demonstration of miracast wireless video in the classroom. If you click on the full screen icon you can watch in full screen mode. Or, if you want to visit the YouTube site of the original video just click on the YouTube logo in the lower right-hand corner of the player.
Slide 6 – I created an interactive poll. This is very easy to do but you will have to upload the entire Office Mix to the Microsoft Mix servers in order for it to work and for the analytics to be captured. You can easily create multiple-choice questions throughout the Mix with the correct answer, or simply add a poll. This allows the creator of the Mix to see analytics for each slide, and if the user is logged in you will also see the username. This is helpful as you can see if all students completed each slide or if they skipped around.
Slide 7 – The last slide of my first Office Mix is my contact information. If I were doing this again I think I would make the poll the last slide. In looking at the analytics from my Office Mix it appears many people exited the Mix after the poll and thus never saw the last slide of contact information.
Another feature allows you to "embed" the completed Office Mix into your website/blog as I have done below. The Office Mix must be hosted on the Mix servers in order to have interactive polling or the ability to embed. Below is my completed Basics of Miracast Wireless Video in the Classroom online presentation.
Click on the PLAY button below to begin this Office Mix presentation:
Wrap-up
Office Mix, as the name implies, allows teachers and students to easily create presentations with a mix of text, audio, video, images, and interactive polls.
The familiar PowerPoint interface greatly reduces the learning curve and the ability to re-record each slide takes the pressure off from trying to be perfect throughout the entire presentation.
I see so many uses of Office Mix for educators. It can be used in primary grades to easily create and record slideshows. Creating voice-over photo albums for storytelling, fieldtrips, and school related events is a cinch. It is so easy to use. Just insert a slide, go to the Mix tab in PowerPoint and hit the record button, press stop when finished, then export the video or Mix, that’s it!
You can record multiple slides with ease and each slide can be recorded independently. That means if you mess up on slide 5 you simply re-record slide 5 and leave the others alone. This takes the pressure off of being perfect throughout the entire presentation.
As a student I like the ability to jump to any slide in the presentation using the slide markers at the bottom of the screen. There is even a vertical slider bar in the lower right-hand corner that allows you to adjust the playback speed of the presentation up to 2.0x time. I recommend listening at normal speed the first time, but for reviewing content speeding up the playback can save time. Speeding up the playback also requires you to listen more intently to keep up with the pace for reviews.
Another feature to mention is that Office Mix provides a built-in screencast tool. The Office Mix plug-in is free and if you do not already have a screencast recording tool Office Mix is worth checking out for this feature alone.
To learn more click on the link below to get started with Office Mix:
Office Mix Gallery (Examples from other teachers)
One final thought, because Office Mix uses standard HTML 5 for playback it works on a variety of devices. This is important as BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) requires support for a variety of operating systems and different sized devices. For now, many mobile phones will need to have a downloadable copy in order to play back.
To learn what playback devices are supported click on the link below.
Keep on Learning!
Tom Grissom, Ph.D.
@tomgrissom
