Adobe Presenter 7 is an add-in to Microsoft PowerPoint. It enables a non-technical user to turn PowerPoint slides into multi-media interactive learning presentations by adding narration, music, other forms of audio, video, Flash SWF files, and quizzes so that presentations can be more interesting as instructional materials. These presentations can be used for webinars, web meetings and Adobe eLearning courses. They can be published to Adobe Connect Pro, other Learning Management Systems, published as PDF files, or to one's desktop. In addition, they can be loaded onto a CD with autorun features. The addition of interactive quizzes adds to solidify the learning experience.

Audio can be edited within Presenter as well as synchronized to animations. A piece of music, for example, can be set up to coincide with each new slide. Video can be imported from a webcam or from a file. Flash animations can be used as well so there is a true multi-media learning experience. It is incredibly easy to add an SWF file.

Once you publish your presentation, you can incorporate a right panel which has 4 options. In addition, you can add attachments.

Presentation options can be chosen at any point.

All of the sections such as audio, video, flash importation can be customized. Often the choice can be applied to an individual slide or all the slides. For example, notes can appear for separate slides or all the slides. The only problem I found is that I had planned to have a low background of music using one piece and having the slides set up to correspond to certain segments. While I could accomplish my objective, the transitions were a little choppy.

In the Help Menu of Presenter 7, there is a section detailing how to use Presenter 7 with 3rd party Learning Management Systems (LMS).

When you create a quiz, there are a lot of options. You can choose multiple choice, true false, have the quiz be slide related or appear at the end of the presentation. It can be scored and the answers linked to URLs or other information. It, also, can be set up as a survey.

There are a number of managers in Presenter 7. These are very useful for setting up options and parameters.

To learn the program, I basically relied on Adobe TV and You Tube and I found a Quick Start Guide on the web in Adobe documents. In addition, there is a PowerPoint presentation in the Adobe Presenter 7 installation.

The more I used Adobe Presenter 7, the more I was impressed with what it can do. For my style of work, I think the ability to narrate once the presentation is set up was the most important. It is so easy since you can import notes and read directly from them. These are the same notes as the viewer can consult if they desire.

Once I played with the program, I found it was very easy to use. However, I wish the documentation had been better. It would have speeded up the learning process since I had to search for information.

More information can be found on the Adobe website about Presenter7. Since PowerPoint is a windows program, so is Presenter 7 although the results can be used on a MAC or a PC. The requirements are:

Adobe Presenter roles Operating system, browser, and additional requirements
Authoring
  • Intel® Pentium® III, or higher.
  • Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2, Windows 7, Windows Vista™ Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise (certified for 32-bit editions only)
  • Microsoft® PowerPoint 2002 (XP) or 2003 or 2007 or 2010
  • Microsoft XML Library - MSXML 4. If this component is missing on the system, one can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads.
  • Internet Explorer 6.0 or later.
  • 256MB of RAM minimum.
  • 250MB of available hard-disk space or higher.
  • 1,024x768 minimum monitor resolution with 32-bit or greater video card.
  • QuickTime software required for multimedia features.
Viewing
  • Internet Explorer 7, 6, 5.5(Windows)
  • Mozilla 1.x (Windows)
  • Firefox 2.x, 1.5 (Win, Mac)
  • Safari 2.x, 1.x (Mac)
  • Netscape 8 (Win)
  • Adobe Reader 9 for viewing Presenter 7.0 created PDF
Additional requirements for viewing
  • Flash Player 8, 9 for Win and Mac.
  • Flash Player 9 for Linux & Solaris.
  • High Speed connection is recommended for viewing multimedia content over internet.

You can download a free trial of Presenter 7. Presenter 7 by itself sells for US $500.00. This add-in can be extremely useful, especially academically. It can be purchased, if you qualify, for the educational price of $150.00. For more information on Adobe products, go to http://www.adobe.com.

I tested the program by publishing it as a PDF and to my desktop. I first created a series of slides in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 and, then, worked with the various components of Presenter 7. This presentation is not meant to be interactive in that I did not include any surveys or quizzes in it although I did test those features. The show, What is Digital Art? consists of slides, an SWF, and narration over the slides. I initially had not intended to include this PDF in my review since it is 10.6 MB. While this uses only a few features, I found these additions to be highly useful and can see how Presenter 7 can be used to create very interesting presentations especially for those who already have created PowerPoint slides shows.