Depth by PowerPoint

[NextGen 3D Content Series, Part 3]

Bringing the 3D Advantage to Presentations

I teach some very popular workshops on how to do teaching (or sales presentations) differently, based on how our minds work. Based on brain research, the techniques I employ cleverly draw the attention of the audience, while sustaining their focused attention on the learning at hand. Done well, these techniques can even go so far as to visually ‘delight’ the viewer. It’s all part of my personal campaign—my intentional effort—to utterly destroy the old notion of “death by PowerPoint,” the notion of tiresome, unimaginative, overly lengthy, and utterly boring PowerPoint presentations. Of course, the notion of “death by PowerPoint” is forever immortalized in such Dilbert cartoons as the PowerPoint Coma, the PowerPoint Chimp, and PowerPoint Poisoning. 

In the stereoscopic 3D world, many have tried to provide a way to convert traditional presentations into stereo 3D, hoping to capture the illusive golden goose ‘wow’ factor.  Our third entry in the field of  Next Generation Educational 3D content is Presente3D. This new startup aims to become nothing less than a game-changer for educators. What these folks are up to is so promising, I playfully call it Depth by PowerPoint, and I assure you it is a good thing, and for quite a number of very practical reasons. First, Presente3D enables 3D content creation through a truly easy-to-use and extremely flexible ribbon bar add-on to PowerPoint 2010. " It enables the educator, e-trainer, or student to turn their presentations into a 3D format, but more importantly, to turn any graphic or chart within a PowerPoint into a 3D object that can be manipulated in space and depth. Any object or text can be individually extruded and the z-depth adjusted, as well. Presente3D, with offices in New Jersey and a talented technical team in the Ukraine, offers the potential for some very creative and immersive presentations. Their easy and flexible process for designing 3D presentations also offers a stiff advantage: it’s easy enough to use that you can construct effective stereo 3D PowerPoint presentations the night before your presentation. Here an overview video and here is a video showing how their interface works. In addition, this tool is quite extensible. It runs on most portable devices, including Apple and Android operating systems, the iPad2, and all 3D TVs and projectors.

Yet, the significance of this effective new 3D tool lies with content creation. Perhaps 95% of educational 3D content currently available supports science instruction. Math content is well on its way toward a solid presence this year. But this tool opens up the floodgates of immediate amateur content creation for all the other subject areas, such as English, world languages, social studies, and the arts—to name a few. Think about it. There are over 500 million PowerPoint users worldwide. Currently, over 50 million PowerPoint presentations are made every day. Now, anyone can be able to create 3D content. It is simply content creation for the rest of us.