Group Leadership Project

My group agreed to create our project in Camtasia for several reasons. Camtasia came highly recommended from our professors, it works well with PowerPoint and Audacity which we were all familiar with, it's is free and easy to use, and no one in the group had ever used it before and we wanted to learn a new tool. We agreed that each of us would create a section of the final project in PowerPoint, record our audio track's in Audacity, and combine them together for a final Camtasia product. This seemed like an easy solution to the group project requirements and gave us the freedom to complete the project over the internet.

I was assigned the "Best Practices" section of our presentation and the conclusion. I used Jing to capture screen shots of multiple LiveBinders from the website that I thought illustrated several great uses for this tool. I then used these screenshots to create my section of the PowerPoint slide show. Finally, I recorded my audio portion using the script I had written and created the MP3 file using Audacity. Everything went smooth and I was able to complete my portion with relative ease. The biggest issue I had was in recording the audio track. It helps a great deal to have a detailed script in front of you outlining what you want to say with each slide and I strongly recommend that you have a headset with a built in microphone for your recordings. I found that a headset with a microphone gives you a better recording and cuts down on the background noise on your track. Jeannine was assigned the intro for our presentation and was to give a brief overview of LiveBinders and explain what you can do with this tool. She completed her portion of the project in Camtasia quickly and was ready to send it to me about 10 days before our project was due. However, we had an issue with her being able to send the file to me due to its size. After trying several things, Jeannine sent me her PowerPoint slides with her embedded audio track. This worked well and I had no problems combining her work into the final project. Molly was assigned the "meat" of our presentation. She was to demonstrate how LiveBinders works. Her PowerPoint presentation was well constructed and you can tell she put a lot of time into creating a quality presentation. However; we had problems when Molly went to add her audio track into her slide show. She tried several times to send me her portion of the project but the audio file would not transfer with the PowerPoint slides. We tried everything we could think of and Molly sought the assistance of Jeannine and Dr Plair. Eventually, Molly sent me her Audacity file separate from her PowerPoint presentation and I embedded it into the Groups slide show and set the timing of her slides to the audio track. Once I had all three PowerPoint presentations combined and the audio tracks embedded, it was simple to finish the project in Camtasia. Camtasia allowed me to upload
the slides and audio into the software with no issues. I was then able to blend the audio of all three of us so that the volume was relatively even. Once I had everything set, I was able to publish our final presentation so that it can be accessed on the internet. I love this concept! I will continue to use Camtasia and I intend on uploading a lot of my PowerPoint presentations and publishing them to the web so that I can access them anytime anywhere. I strongly recommend everyone giving Camtasia a look!

The most important issue when dealing with a project of this type is timing. When you are working alone on a project, you can wait until the last minute and still pull things together to meet deadlines most of the time. However, when you are working in a group atmosphere and you have multiple pieces, it is important to get everything done early so that you can put out the fires that always seem to arise and still complete the project by the set deadline. I would have liked to have spent more time editing our audio tracks with Camtasia; however, due to time constraints this was not possible. Overall, this was a positive experience and I was fortunate to have great group members to work with. I believe that we were able to collaborate and work well together to create a good project.

Here is a link to Group 2's Leadership Project