There are some other nice things you can do with PowerPoint presentations apart from show them as just presentations, or even view them again.

PowerPoint slides can be easily saved as images as mentioned by Phil in his blog posting on this issue.

Show them on a mobile device, ie a mobile phone, a PSP, an iPod or similar. It should be noted that the iPod touch (and the iPhone) can show PowerPoint presentations natively using the media viewer. Presentations can either me sent via e-mail or moved to the iPod touch using one of the file management applications now available for it.

You could also incorporate the images of the slides into Microsoft Photostory 3 and add narration or even more images.

Phil in his blog posting talking about loading the images ontot a DVD.

I suppose you could even burn them onto a DVD and look at them on your TV via a DVD player: now that’s an exciting night in!

In terms of DVDs, one thing that I have done is to use Apple’s Keynote to import a PowerPoint presentation, and add a voice over and export as a movie. This movie as well as being exported to various mobile devices or embedded onto a webpage and I have taken this movie and burnt it to DVD.

One of the reasons for doing this is that some learners may not have a computer at home or a media capable mobile device, but probably have a (£15) DVD player from Asda or similar.

Today a lot of teaching staff are still using PowerPoint, but there is nothing to stop them or learners viewing those presentations in different ways and on different devices.

What we do is provide the hardware and software so that learners undertake the conversion process themselves. Though we are looking at tools to make the process easier and more transparent.