Transcript Lesson 3 – PowerPoint

Lesson 3 – PowerPoint
A Tutorial by
Aaron Price
Introduction
PowerPoint is a very powerful and effective presentation tool. It
is included in the Microsoft Office suite, and when combined
with a projector (which is included in most classrooms), it
allows for a much more attractive way to present material to
students than overheads or whiteboards. The ability to include
themes, graphics, audio and video may be just enough to keep
that sleep-deprived student awake for another 50 minutes. In
this lesson we will explore some of the different features of
PowerPoint and also some basic presentation techniques.
The first thing that you'll need to do is create a new
presentation. When you first open PowerPoint, it may create a
blank one for you, but if not select File->New from the
menu. PowerPoint will bring up a dialog on the left, from which
you'll want to select "From Design Template”
Choosing a Template
Choosing a Template
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PowerPoint will now provide you with a cover page,
and you will want to select a template that all your
pages are going to use. There are a lot of really
good built in ones, so scroll through the list on the
right until you find one that you like. You can change
themes at any time, so this isn't vitally important that
you find the exact one you want, since you can
always change your mind.
You should now have nothing but a title
page. PowerPoint is kind enough to give you pre-set
places to put your title and subtitle. Once you have
that information, you should have a completed cover
page that will look something (but not exactly, since
different themes will look different) like this:
A Cover Page Example
Adding Slides
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Now that you've chosen your template and created your cover
page, you're ready to begin the real work. I would like to
suggest at this point that if you have a bunch of overheads that
you convert them to PowerPoint. This way they will be easily
editable, portable, and be much more pleasing to the eye. One
option is to scan the overheads and then use text recognition
software to import them into PowerPoint. I'm not going to go
over all of that here, but if you are interested in doing this,
please e-mail me and I would be glad to help you. Otherwise,
you can always have a TA copy them by hand for you.
Moving on, I'm going to show you some things about adding
and removing slides, inserting pictures and other media, as well
as transitions.
To add a slide, simply right-click on the Slides pane on the left
side of the page, and select "New Slide":
Adding Slides
Inserting Media
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Now that you have created your next slide, choose a
layout on the right and edit the slide. Changing the
order of slides is as simple as dragging them up and
down the list; to delete, simply click on a slide and
press the delete key.
To insert text, images, tables, graphs, or other
media, simply select the appropriate option from the
insert menu. Also, some of the layouts include preset areas for these things. For these, all you have to
do is click on the appropriate icon on the slide.
Inserting Media
Inserting Text
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Once you have your picture/text/graph/table/etc. on
the slide, you can drag the corners to resize and
rotate, or click on the border and drag to move.
A note on inserting text: to insert text, which is kind of
important for a presentation, select insert -> text (or
click on the insert text icon on the bottom of the
screen - the square with the letter A and the
horizontal lines). You will now have a downwardpointing arrow. Click anywhere on the slide and
begin typing. The box will expand as you add text,
and it acts otherwise like any other word processing
program. Use the text formatting icons on the top to
change font, size, bold, etc. You can move the text
around by dragging the border.
Transitions
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One of the nice features of PowerPoint is the
different transitions that you can do. Transitions are
effects that occur between slides, such as one slide
moving off the right side of the screen to reveal the
next slide, or perhaps the slide dividing into several
pieces and going in different directions off the
screen. To access the transitions, select Slide Show
-> Slide Transitions from the menu. This will bring
up the slide transition pane on the right of the
screen. You can preview all of the different
transitions, but my recommendation would be to
scroll all the way to the bottom and select the
Random Transition option, and click Apply to All
Slides. This will do a random transition between
every slide.
Transitions
Saving, Presenting, and Conclusion
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Finally, you're going to want to save and present this thing! Save it in the usual
way, File -> Save from the menu. There are several ways to begin presenting the easiest is by clicking on the little icon in the lower-left corner... I guess it
kind of looks like a presentation screen... it's the third from the left in the little
row at the bottom of your slide pane, right above the word "Draw". Otherwise
you can select Slide Show -> View Show from the menu, or easier yet press the
F5 key. Click the mouse button (or, alternately, press either the enter, space, or
left arrow key) to scroll through slides. There are other options here too, such
as using a remote control to go through slides.
If you would like to see an example of a completed PowerPoint presentation,
click here to download this tutorial in PowerPoint format.
That's it! As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact my
by any of the means located on the main page. I would be more than happy to
spend some time doing these things one-on-one. PowerPoint is a very useful
tool, and it's almost a shame that so many professors continue to use
overheads for presentations in classrooms that are already equipped with a
(very expensive) projector. If you decide to convert your entire curriculum from
overheads to PowerPoint, I guarantee that you will not regret it.