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Vadlo is a new search engine that's different in two ways:

• Vadlo is geared towards the vertical market -- and it only searches content related to biology research related information.
• Vadlo doesn't really look at just pages -- it indexes five categories of documentation -- these are Protocols, Online Tools, PowerPoints, Databases, and Software

I found their PowerPoint search quite amazing -- and asked the folks at Vadlo about their new search engine. While the Vadlo user-base is growing rapidly, the team at Vadlo is focused on developing the content. Here's a statement that the Vadlo Scientists sent to me to put up on the MedicinePPT site:

"We believe PowerPoint presentations are very useful tools -- more than they are recognized as such. A teacher preparing a lecture, an executive preparing for a business meeting, a clinician reporting a case study, or a scientist preparing for the departmental seminar can get a lot of angles on the subject matter by quickly looking at similar presentations and refine her/his own accordingly.

"The Vadlo index is built on the PowerPoints which have relevance to the following, everything else is filtered out.

1. Biology Research - Organisms, Genes, Pathways, Mechanisms etc.
2. Academia - Grants & Funding, Publication, Interviewing etc.
3. Bioinformatics - Statistics, Software, Methods etc.
4. Biology Education - College level Biology lectures, Biodiversity, Environment etc.
5. Medical/Clinical - Diseases, Conditions, Case Studies, Intervention, Drugs etc.
6. Library - Journals, Open-access, Peer-review, Literature databases etc.
7. Biotech/Pharma Business - Technology transfer, Patents, Products, Clusters etc.
   

"We do hope search-users realize that PowerPoints are not peer-reviewed material, nor supposed to be authentic reference. The use of these PowerPoints should be limited to quick approximate subject reference while getting presentation ideas. It would be quite important to find out the time-frame, focus, and source of the presentation before using it as a substantive source of information, if you must".

The Vadlo site also has a cool collection of medical cartoons that you can use in your PowerPoints freely.

Labels: medicine, powerpoint, vadlo

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Greg Friese, MS, NREMT-P is president of Emergency Preparedness Systems LLC and a paramedic, educator, author, and outdoor enthusiast. To learn more and to receive rapid e-learning design and production tips subscribe to the EPS blog at their site.

Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself, Emergency Preparedness Systems LLC, and the training programs you create.

Greg: I am the founder and president of Emergency Preparedness Systems LLC. EPS does four things:

• We create narrated multimedia Flash movies for emergency responders.
• We convert existing classroom training for online delivery.
• We design and deliver new lessons and curriculum for online delivery that honor student's knowledge, experience, and time.
• We teach our proven rapid e-learning for emergency responders production process to educators and training officers.

Our training programs for EMTs and paramedics, generally 25-30 minutes long, are used for continuing or refresher education. Since emergency responders work rotating shifts, it is very difficult for all employees to be in the training room together. Online lessons allow asynchronous delivery of the exact same content across multiple shifts and multiple stations. If users are called out for an emergency they can resume the training program when they return. Each lesson is approved by the Continuing Education Coordinating Board for EMS (CECBEMS) so students know that it will be accepted for local, state, or national recertification requirements. Most EPS content is distributed through CentreLearn.com and RapidCE.com.

Geetesh: Why do you use PowerPoint as the starting point for the creation of these programs? And what else do you use to enhance and distribute these programs.

Greg: We use PowerPoint for several reasons. First of all it is an excellent tool for us to storyboard a lesson. During initial production, each slide is given a working title and the script for the audio narration is written in the notes view. As production and editing progresses, notes for images, objects, and animations are added to the notes view. Once the script is finalized, slide production begins which includes a descriptive slide title and sub-title, insertion of images and objects, and animation formatting.

The final step is to convert the PowerPoint slides to Flash using Articulate Presenter. The audio is inserted and synchronized with the PowerPoint slide animations. The end user watches a narrated Flash movie inside the Articulate Presenter player. They may not even be aware that they are watching a movie that was created with PowerPoint.

We also use another Articulate product called Engage to create and insert custom Flash learning objects into the PowerPoint. The Articulate Engage Interactions publish inside the Articulate Presenter movie.

Labels: articulate, medicine, online_presentations, powerpoint, training

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