A Uniform Way to Handle Any Slide-Based Presentation: The Universal Presentation Controller

Abstract

We present a sophisticated approach for handling and processing presentations and multimedia content in the classroom. The main contribution of our work is the way we technically control and display our models for multimedia based presentations: In contrast to existing approaches we avoid converting the file-based representation to a home-brew format which seems to be the easiest way for the processing and appliance of own features. Instead, we present the benefit of our layered solution that creates a model-based representation of any popular slide-based presentation format like PowerPoint and PDF and uses the original presentation systems that run in parallel to our own application, the universal presentation controller. Therefore, we can keep all hot features like integrated audios or videos, animations and slide transitions, notes and even native inking of the original presentation systems, but are also able to add our own extensions in general. We can communicate with other applications and offer them access to our model and core functionality. The models can be modified and extended online, which for example allows the integration of snapshots taken from a webcam.