Presentation
Software: PowerPoint
The
main points to focus on in this lecture.
1.) Why you would use presentation software; 2.) presentation software
terminology; and 3.) PowerPoint
1.) Why would you use presentation software?
People remember…..
– 10% of what they read.
– 20% of what they hear.
– 30% of what they see.
– 70% of what they see and hear.
Presentation
software was originally developed for the purpose of creating sales
presentations. Using a computerized presentation allows businesses to "easily
develop professional-looking 'slide show' presentations containing high-quality
graphics, audio, and video (Capron, page 77).
"If
your business depends on pitching your product or service in some formal way,
presentation software can help you to create colorful demonstrations that are
the equivalent of an electronic slide show. Presentation software is designed
for regular people, not artists, so putting together a slick sequence of text
and graphics is remarkably simple" (Capron, page 83).
Educators
at all levels use presentation software to enhance lectures. When the teacher
also uses the feature that allows the slides to be printed as handouts, it
enables students to focus more on listening to the lecture than writing notes.
Presentation software can help to present complex problems. Instead of the
teacher having to draw the first step on the board, erase it and draw the next
step, and so on, slides can be made to show each step and the students will get
to see the process "in action". Because presentation software allows
the instructor to incorporate video, audio, photos, animation, and the
Internet, lectures can be made more up to date and exciting.
Companies
use presentation software to conduct training sessions for their employees. It
has been used for training in company benefits, in computer applications, and
for things like in sexual harassment workshops.
Students can use presentation software to present reports in any class. The advantages of using a presentation when you have to make a speech are: that it helps you stay focused and on topic, that the visuals and multimedia aspects of your show will help keep the attention of your audience (your fellow students and your teacher), and that your speech will have a greater impact.
2.) Presentation software terminology
Action buttons: allow you to insert buttons in your
presentation and define hyperlinks. Action buttons contain shapes, such as
right and left arrows. Use them when you want to include commonly understood
symbols for going to next, previous, first, and last slides. You can use these
buttons for a self-running presentation at a kiosk or for a presentation that
you plan to publish on your company intranet or the Internet. PowerPoint also
has action buttons for playing movies or sounds.
Hyperlinks: this allows you to go from your show to
a variety of locations — for example, a custom show, a specific slide
within your presentation, a different presentation altogether, a Microsoft Word
document or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, or an Internet, intranet, or e-mail
address. You can create a hyperlink from any object — including text,
shapes, tables, graphs, and pictures.
Object:
Any element
that appears on a PowerPoint slide, such as
clip art, text, drawings, charts, sounds, and video clips. You can refer to a
clip art object, a text object, a title object, a drawing object, etc.
Presentation
File:
The file you
save to disk that contains all the slides, speaker's notes, handouts, etc. that
makes up your presentation.
Slide: An individual screen in a
slide show
Slide
advancement: Tell
slides to move automatically after a set amount of time or when you hit a key
on the keyboard.
Slide
Show: A
series of slides displayed in sequence. A slide show can be controlled manually
or automatically.
Transition:
A special
effect used to introduce a slide during a slide show. For example, you can fade
in from black, or dissolve from one slide to another.
3.) PowerPoint
PowerPoint
is the most commonly used presentation software package on the market. As it
was designed for the business market, it is the easiest of all applications to
learn how to use. I have a list of tutors for you to use listed on page 5 of this lecture. Going through any one of them should get you on your
way to being a PowerPoint Pro.
Hints
& Tips
·
A normal viewer will look
first at the upper, left corner of the screen - put the most important
information here.
·
Be careful not to use copyrighted material unless you cite it.
·
Be consistent in use of fonts, colors in graphics
·
Don’t use too many fonts (3 should be the maximum on any slide)
·
Generally speaking, unless animations are done carefully, they detract
from your presentation
·
Graphs and charts may take longer to discuss depending on how complex
they are
·
If you have more than one
point to make on a slide, use the animation feature to introduce each one at a
time. If you show all of them, the viewers will be reading the screen and not
listening to you.
·
Just because the software
gives you many, many options for backgrounds does not mean you have to use
them. If you do choose to use a background keep it simple so it doesn’t detract
from eh message.
·
Keep graphics simple
·
Keep slides on for at least 45 seconds so people can read and
understand them
·
No more than 4 colors per chart
·
No more than 6 lines of text per slide
·
One concept on each slide or overhead
·
Put important information at the top of slides
·
Put your most important ideas first
·
Shaded backgrounds can make text hard to read
·
Test
your presentation on the computer system that you will be presenting on before
you present. Give yourself enough time to fix and colors or fonts that you may need
to change.
·
The
three most commonly recommended background colors are dark blue, dark green,
and dark red. Professional trainers and others who hope to encourage audience
participation often choose dark green as the background, because this color
seems to stimulate interaction. (Pence)
·
The typical slide takes approximately 2-3 minutes each to discuss
·
Use dark backgrounds when using an LCD projector
·
Use informative titles on tables and graphs
·
Use landscape rather than portrait
·
Video can be used in a slide show if:
–The video is very short (video file
sizes are quite large).
–The purpose of the video is to show a part of a movie (10 minutes or so).
Some
Sample Questions from the Microsoft PowerPoint Quiz
1. How do
you print your slides in a handout that includes lines for notes?
· In the Print dialog box, select Handouts and set the number of slides per page to 3. The handout with three slides per page is the only number setting that includes lines for note taking, as the preview in the Print dialog box shows.
2.
How do you make an inserted sound file play
continuously over several slides?
· In the Custom Animation task pane, open the options for the sound effect and set the sound to play for the desired number of slides. PowerPoint regards an inserted sound file as an animated item, so you set options for it in the Custom Animation task pane. The sound file shows in the task pane's list of effects.
3.
You've got a bunch of digital holiday photos
you want to put into a slide show. What's the quickest method?
·
On the Insert menu, point to Picture, and click New Photo Album. The
Photo Album feature is now a part of your PowerPoint 2002 installation (it used
to be a separate download); to access it, click the Insert menu, point to
Picture, and click New Photo Album. Select the options you want for the album,
and presto!
4. You're
giving your presentation, and you need to click to a slide that's a few slides
back. How do you get there?
· Right-click, point to Go on the shortcut menu, point to By Title, and click the slide you want to go to. This is the most direct way to get to a slide that's several slides away (and sometimes even to the prior slide, such as when you have animation effects on your slides). The check mark shows you where you are.
Some example slide shows
This
is a variety of different shows for you to view in PowerPoint. Shows do not have
to be used only for presentations.
A First Look at Computers: www.neiu.edu/~ncaftori/ppt/neiu/cs100/ch01.ppt
Data Mining: www.dama-ncr.org/Library/2001.11.14-Laura%20Squier.ppt
Directions, to
Grab-A-Graphic (how to find and
insert graphics): www.monroe.k12.la.us/mcs/challenge/presentations/Grab-A-Graphic.ppt
ID Theft: www.aga.org/Content/ContentGroups/Public_Relations2/MondayIdentityTheftGordon.ppt
Jeopardy: www.dragon.k12.pa.us/ms/west/techtermsjeopardy.ppt
Career Trends: www.digitaledge.org/connections02/presentations/cohen_barbara.ppt
PC Phones: sangonet.org.za/conference2005/presentations/Skype%20Presentation-Rob%20Allen.ppt
Sources to learn PowerPoint
Online PowerPoint Tutorials - http://www.quasar.ualberta.ca/edpy202/tutorial/PowerPoint/PowerPoint.htm
Online Tutorials from the SESD Teacher
Resource Site: http://sesd.sk.ca/teacherresource/onlinetutorials/tutorials.htm#Microsoft%20PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint
Page: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010857971033.aspx
PowerPoint in the Classroom: http://www.actden.com/pp/
PowerPoint
Tutorial: http://www.science.iupui.edu/SAC98/ppt.htm
The PowerPoint FAQ - http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/
Using PowerPoint 2003 by
Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/office/powerpoint/using/default.asp
Works Cited
Capron, H. L., &
Johnson, J. A., Computers Tools for an
Information Age, Edition
7, Prentice Hall‚ Upper Saddle River‚ New
Marshall, George, Manager’s Guide to Desktop Publishing.
Pence, Harry E., Using Color - Part I, SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, NY http://www.eclipse.net/~pankuch/Newsletter/Pages_News/Spring_2001_NewsletterCCE.html,
accessed via the WWW on 2/16/03.
Pence, Harry E., Tutorials on Using Multimedia and Presentation
Software, Part of The
Alchemist's Lair Web Site, SUNY Oneonta, http://employees.oneonta.edu/pencehe/MMtutorial.html, accessed via the WWW on 2/16/03