As promised at the start of this academic year I blogged about the importance of ‘Professional Exploration’ where as a teacher you really need to try to learn new things. I had planned to try Office Mix so here it is.
Office Mix is a new add in for Microsoft PowerPoint which is really easy to download and it just sits in as a new tab when you are using PowerPoint. It is a tool that turns your PowerPoint slides into an interactive presentation where by selecting Mix and then pressing record you can add video, audio, highlight text and insert interactive quizzes into your PowerPoint.
It is a fantastic too, it is extremely easy to use and has great potential to be used in the classroom.
Once you have added your video, commentary and any interactive quizzes you can then save and upload it to the mix website, you don’t have to do this as you could share it with your class by sending them the presentation and they open it as a normal PowerPoint and watch the show then respond. However uploading it to the Mix site which is easy only take a few minutes then you can share it with a much wider audience as it is converted automatically to a video. You can see how to get started below:
https://mix.office.com/Home/GettingStarted
Once it is on the Mix website then people can view or download your mixes and also then give you feedback.
This tool has great potential as a vehicle to deliver MOOC’s and a Flipped learning approach however at the moment once it is converted into a video and available on the main Mix website the quiz slides don’t seem to capture and collect the data for you to analyse unless I am doing something wrong? As it is still quite new perhaps this is something that will develop with time.
Here is my first Office Mix about eSafety, what do you think?
This looks really interesting Dan; time to experiment needed I think!
Great work Dan as ever, have you posted your mix on the official mix gallery site?
https://mix.office.com/Gallery .
If you think Mix is good. Sign up for Sway… https://sway.com/
I am already signed up and looking forward to getting my early preview 🙂
Hi Stuart, thanks for the comment, yes it is there, I believe it is the 1st eSafety related mix on the gallery so should be easy to find when you search on there.
Yes it looks really interesting Sue and great potential – keep me posted if you give it a try 🙂
Great Mix Dan…I think this is the first instance I have see of an embedded mix. You are correct about the video version that students might view on their mobile devices. In that viewing mode, there isn’t a way to record analytics because it loses some of the interactivity. They can still view it on a PC or Mac though and you can collect info that way.
Hi David, thank you for stopping by and commenting I really appreciate it. How does the analytics collect from someone downloading it and viewing it on a pc or mac? Does it still work on video mode or they have to download it as a powerpoint and view it?
As far as I understand it the analytics will only be collected when the ‘Mix’ is viewed from the officemix website. You’ll notice when taking it live that you have the option of requiring sign in, making it private, public, etc. If you are using this with students in an Office 365 environment you would after share the link with them and they would use their Office 365 logins. Because they have logged in, you will see the data show up as they view the content. As far as the other modes like video and downloading the PowerPoint, this is how I view those:
Video:
1. It is viewable on any mobile device
2. It is available for just consuming content not interacting with content. For example if I wanted to record a quick experiment on chemical vs. physical change and have the students observe it over the weekend before class.
3. I should not expect any analytics from this mode because it is a single streaming file.
Downloadable PowerPoint:
1. It is only accessible and editable as a Mix in PowerPoint 2013
2. This option is available for those ‘Mixers’ that want to allow access to their source files for other people to download and re-mix on their own and then upload their version of the Mix to OfficeMix.com
3. In creating this option I can have an online repository of content that can be searched by tagline, title, subject, grade level, etc. If I make it public then other educators can build off of the content that I have created.
4. I don’t think the download option is appropriate for student use because the content doesn’t play automatically and it doesn’t collect any data.
I hope this helps!
Best,
David
Wow David thank you this is an awesome comment and actually has triggered me to write another post – will include this in the next one. Thank you 🙂
Glad I could help Dan. Sorry for all the grammatical errors in the first paragraph…looks like my editing didn’t quite delete all the words I meant to. Starting with the second sentence, I meant to say something like this:
If you are using this with students in an Office 365 environment, you should share the link with them and they should login using their credentials. After being authenticated, the data will start to populate the site as they view the content.