Digital Media | News

New Video Site Provides Free Presentation Capture and Delivery to Educators

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/30/12

A professor of educational technology has launched an Arabic and English language network that allows individuals to produce and share video presentations online for free. PresentationTube, created by Alaa Sadik, includes a recording program that lets the user capture a slideshow with video and audio. Sadik is an associate professor of instructional technology at Egypt's South Valley University, currently working at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman. Oman is an Arab state in southwest Asia.

PresentationTube is a non-profit project intended to help local teachers and students produce and share videos online; however, the site isn't limited to users in Oman.

A "lite" version of the system is limited to 15 minutes of recording time and has basic video options. A "pro" version is available in two flavors: A 12-user group edition is $450; a site-wide-license is $950. The Pro version has more video and recording options and includes a "life-time" software license, a year of upgrades, 24/7 technical support, uploading of an unlimited number of video presentations, and unlimited video storage space and delivery.

The network has two components--a desktop presentation recorder and a video sharing network. The recorder, which can be downloaded from the Web site for free, captures presentations without the need to have an Internet connection or third party software while recording. It synchronizes the presenter's audio and video, PowerPoint slides, drawings, handwritten words, and web content. The network lets presenters publish their videos and add scrollable slide thumbnails, comments, and quizzes.

In a statement the company said, "One of [the] most endearing qualities of PresentationTube is its simplicity of use--it would be hard to screw up. And if you are a potential viewer you can easily search the submitted videos for content to use in lectures and see how diverse the selection is. It's easy to see how this network became pretty popular."