Experimenting with Presentain

I was first introduced to Presentain through a post from Michelle Pacansky-Brock. She shared her first experience using Presentain and used it as an example of vulnerability while presenting "Teaching in the Dark: Learning to Love What We Fear." Thanks Michelle.

This led me to my own experiment with Presentain during a pre TLT Group FridayLive event. Presentain is designed to help manage face to face presentations. The setting for this experiment was a little unique in that it took place using Adobe Connect, with participants in various places throughout the US, so not your typical presentation setting.

A big thank you to the my fellow TLT Experimenters and to Neek Kuat from Presentain for his quick response to my post experiment questions.  Here is what we discovered so far:

• AUDIO on the RECORDING. One of the cool things about Presentain is that a recording is created. In my experiment, the audio did not turn out. I had my phone sitting on the table next to me with the mic against the table. According to Neek "Best way to record the "slidecast" (presentation recording) is to switch on "Rotate remote" option in settings of the app (on your smart device) - this will allow you to turn your smartphone upside down when presenting - and hold it in your hand during presentation." The mic quality of your smartphone will impact the result as well.
• POLL RESULTS.   Poll results are designed to be displayed only on the main screen not on the handheld.  Neek's response: "Good point on poll results - will consider showing results on audience devices when making a next batch of updates to audience dashboard.
• AUDIENCE QUESTIONS. I should have been given a signal on my smartphone when a question from the audience came in.  I did not. This should have worked so, I will do some more testinDg as I really like this feature.  In theory, I should see a prompt on my smartphone and can then chose to display the question on the screen and address it live.  The questions also appear in a session summary so I could address them afterward as well. Response from Neek: "You are absolutely right about the incoming question notification. Originally we wanted to notify the speaker about incoming question with a short vibration of the smartphone, but technically it is not possible yet since Apple doesn't allow to use vibration feature while using microphone (I think they are trying to avoid noises in the phone calls or when recording an audio).
• DASHBOARD: The other cool thing about this app is the information available to you after the presentation, see diagram below: slide requests, lead captures and poll results.

One of the experimenters wondered if Presentain would replace clickers. In essence, the smart device does become an audience response device. I think answering a Presentain poll is more seamless than Poll Everywhere. The audience does need to go to the website to access the presentation on their smart device.  Once at that website, they can see the slides, ask a question and answer polls.

Someone asked how similar or different this was from NearPod. I have zero experience with Nearpod but did discover that it is an iPad app, similar to Presentain with a few more bells and whistles for in class instruction.

My next step is to run the experiment again to check the recording audio and the audience question feature. I will also write up the steps for setting up the presentation.