I have two objectives for this post. First, I will review Freepath 2.0 Beta, a free presentation tool.  Second, I will use Freepath to present 25 Free Tools for Learning Professionals as researched and compiled by Jane Hart.

According to Dave Giusti of Freepath, it is:

“… a free tool where you create playlists that contain content that can include websites, images, videos, presentations, pretty much anything. You then call up the content for a presentation when you want it, presenting it in a non-linear flexible way. These files are launched from within Freepath; no need to launch Word, a Browser, [media] player, etc.”

You can also sign up for a free account at https://www.myfreepath.com, which gives you 100 MB of storage space for uploading Freepath playlists for sharing and collaborating.

Although Freepath can rightly be called a screen-touring application, similar to Flowgram (which I reviewed earlier this week), it functions best as a live presentation tool.  Watch a brief tour of Freepath.

Freepath

Benefits:

• Simple interface makes it quite easy to add almost any type of resource to a Freepath playlist.  It’s as easy as drag-and-drop.  Reordering resources in your playlists is just as easy.
• Documents, presentations, videos, audio files, web pages … everything launches within Freepath seemlessly.  No conversion necessary.
• Edit documents in real-time.
• Preview resources in the sidebar.  Even select a portion of a video rather than displaying the entire video.
• Easily switch between modes:  prep (preview) mode, presentation (fullscreen) mode, dual display mode.
• Works with GoToMeeting, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, InterCall, WebEx, and other online meeting tools.
• Upload playlists to myFreepath.com for sharing and collaboration.
• Interact with web page content within Freepath without leaving the presentation (playlist)!  This feature is currently lacking in Flowgram.  (If you click a link in Flowgram, you have suddenly left the Flowgram and must use the back button to return to the Flowgram screen tour.)
• Freepath FAQs.
• Freepath Forums.

Drawbacks:

• Requires a local client to be downloaded and installed.  No web client is offered at this time, so anyone wishing to view your Freepath playlists must install the local client and then download and import the playlists.  In my opinion, this really limits Freepath to live presentations where the presenter controls the application, but I believe this is the thrust of Freepath’s vision.  It isn’t like SlideShare or SlideRocket, which make presentations available to anyone with a web browser.
• Cannot annotate resources (such as web sites) that are added to a Freepath playlist.  Unlike Flowgram, you cannot add notes, highlight content, or scroll to off-screen content automatically.
• Although you can interact with web pages that have been added to Freepath, it is a little clunky.  You have to double-click the screen to “activate” it first.  (Double-clicking doesn’t always seem to work for me.  Sometimes I have to click several times to interact with the web page content.)
• Navigation, in general, seems clunky.  Press the space bar to move from resource to resource … unless you have double-clicked a resource to interact with its content.  In that case, you must use the navigation buttons in the control bar at the bottom of the screen, which may or may not be visible (hover over the bottom of the screen to reveal it).  Spacebar navigation doesn’t work for me on the first screen of the playlist, so I have to use the navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen.  You can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate, but, again, this doesn’t work if you have “activated” a resource to interact with its content.

If you can master the navigation techniques and you plan to make live presentations with a variety of media types, Freepath is great. I also hear that they will be introducing several new features in the next few weeks.  That is certainly worth investigating.

However, if you want to make presentations publicly visible on the Internet (easily) or if you want to annotate the resources for asynchronous viewing, Freepath isn’t the best tool.  For visible (“embeddable”) presentations, try SlideShare or SlideRocket.  For annotating resources in your screen tours, try Flowgram.  So saying, I imagine that there are many enhancements yet to come for Freepath 2.0 Beta.

I have incorporated all 25 of the free tools recommended by Jane Hart for learning professionals into an interactive Freepath playlist.  In order to view the tools and interact with the content, you must download and install the Freepath client.  Then you can download and import my playlist for fullscreen viewing on your computer.  (And there will probably be a little bit of a learning curve with the interface.)

If you would rather not go through those steps (and I don’t blame you), you can view all 25 of the free tools for learning professionals below in the embedded SlideShare presentation (created by Jane Hart).  Enjoy!