Converting PowerPoint Presentations to a Chalkboard (for Windows Users)

PowerPoint presentations are one of the most common ways to deliver eLearning content on learning management systems (LMS). Often times, they are set up for the student to click through each slide manually rather than viewing an automated presentation. The DigitalChalk chalkboard element allows you to upload PowerPoint presentations to our system and then synch it to an audio file, creating a video presentation for the student to watch.

How to Save Your PowerPoint Presentation

If you are a Windows user, you will want to save your PowerPoint presentation by finding the “Save As” option under the Windows icon – make sure to change the file type to a PNG. As a Windows user, you will not have to enter any size dimensions – it is automatically set to the correct 640 x 480 size. The presentation will save within a new folder because the slides have been saved as individual JPEG files.

*Helpful hint: Saving this slideshow to your desktop makes it easier to find when uploading it to the chalkboard.

After you have saved this file, open the new folder that was created and select all of the slides in it. Now that you have selected all slides, right click (be sure that all of the slides are still selected) and choose to compress them together – this will create the .zip file needed for the chalkboard.

Uploading Your Slideshow to a Chalkboard

*Important Tip: Remember to customize the layout of your chalkboard, giving you the option to add slides.

To upload your slideshow you will:

1. 1. Go to the “Manage Courses” tab.
   2. Select “Manage Course Elements” for the course you want to add the slides to.
   3. Create a new chalkboard by clicking on “Add a Chalkboard” option underneath the “Course Elements” menu on the left. If you have already created a chalkboard you will choose “Edit Chalkboard” or “Edit the Live Version” if it has already been activated.
   4. Now that you are in the edit screen for the chalkboard, go to the “Mange Slides” option.

1. After you have selected Manage Slides, select the “+” symbol – this will show the upload options for your slides.
2. Select the option “Upload a zip file of images from your local computer”.
3. Click on “Choose File” and find the zip file you created (this file will be in the folder with all of the individual images of the slides and will be titled Archive.zip) and select that to upload. If you would like to add a tag to this file you can, but it is not necessary.
4. It will take a few minutes to upload all of the slides to the chalkboard for you to use, but after it has been fully uploaded you will be given a green window, notifying you that it has been successfully encoded.

Uploading an Audio File

Before you can add your slides to the timeline you must now upload an audio file, this can be any audio file you’d like – or if you would prefer to not have sound accompany the slide DigitalChalk has provided blank audio files for you to download and use. You can choose from 5 to 20 minutes, 25 to 40 minutes, and 45 to 60 minutes.

Once you have chosen the audio file that you want to:

1. Select “Manage Media” – this is to the right of the “Manage Slides” option.
2. You will also see a “+” symbol as you did on the “Manage Slides” section, select it.
3. Choose the audio file you want to go with the slides and click the “Upload” button.
4. It will take a few minutes for the audio file to upload and encode.
5. After it has been uploaded you will be given a green window, notifying you that it has been successfully encoded.
6. Now that you have successfully uploaded your file to the chalkboard, you will need to “choose” it so that it is added to the chalkboard timeline.

Adding the Slides to the Timeline

Now that both the slides and audio files have successfully been uploaded to the chalkboard you can begin to add the slides to the timeline. Not sure how to add your slides to the chalkboard timeline? Check out this video to walk you through on how to add slides to the timeline.