In Pachyderm, you are given templates of various screens that might suitable to the type of presentation you want to do. These screens can be linked together for a larger project. Once a screen is selected, you are brought to it's blueprint where authoring is as simple as colour by numbers.
The program has its highlights and its downsides. Of course the highlights are 1) I don't need to learn or write lines of code, (I am one of the most non-tech person in OLT) 2) "colour by numbers" style of authoring makes it easy to use and understand, 3) Using Flash makes it a little bit fancier than just scrolling up and down.
A screen of the presentation I made.
Now for the downsides *enter eerie symphonic music*. As D'arcy mentioned in his comment, Pachyderm strictly limits uploaded files to either JPEG/GIF images, audio, flash files, or videos. I only used images but even the JPEG format is strict. My work is primarily in Adobe Illustrator and/or Photoshop. I had to convert my files but Photoshop JPEGs are not supported for some reason. To get around this challenge, I imported the image into PowerPoint and then saved the slides again as JPEGs. Successful but a tedious process and image resolution, not that great! Maybe there's an easier way to do this.
A screen took me about 4 hours to make. Near the end, the connection was slowing d0wn for some reason. In order to create/upload a portfolio comparable to what I have in print-form would be a time-consuming endeavour. I would like to continue creating the project but time-constraints are ever-present.
Assessment:
Pachyderm can be quite a useful presentation for a student who has images from their work. They can either be event photos, created artwork, produced covers, etc. Some conversion is needed for different file formats. For students who primarily write during their work terms (e.g. proposal writers, policy analysts, etc.), the program is not ideally suited for them.
