PRESENTATIONS USING POWERPOINT

PowerPoint is an application software package that allows you to create, print and show presentations.

When you are giving a presentation, your main aim is to get key points across to your audience, in a way that allows them to understand the points quickly and completely. PowerPoint presentations help you do this by showing information concisely, on a page-by-page basis. Each ‘page’ of information is called a slide.

PowerPoint’s special features allow you easily to create imaginative and concise slides. Once a presentation is created there are a number of ways to show it:

1. On-screen presentation: this is viewed on the PC screen. It is a dynamic way of presenting slides, because a simple click of the mouse easily allows you to move from one slide to the next, or back again. On-screen presentations can only be viewed by a small group of persons at a time unless you hook up an electronic projector to the computer. These kinds of projectors are expensive.
2. Overhead projection: slides can be printed onto a clear plastic sheet (called a transparency) for display on a traditional overhead projector.
3. Printed handouts: a duplicate of slides, printed on paper. In this way, the audience for your presentation can take home a copy of it, to review the information you presented in their own time.
4. 35 mm slides: a printout that can be used with a traditional 35 mm projector.

PowerPoint allows you to include sound, animation, videos, photos and graphics in your presentations. PowerPoint slides should be brief and uncluttered. You should not try to include too much information in each slide. When you are presenting, what you say out loud will expand on the information on the slide. Your words will complement the PowerPoint presentation.

 

Starting PowerPoint

1. Click on the Start button.
2. Select Programs.
3. Select Microsoft PowerPoint. The ‘PowerPoint’ dialogue box appears, as shown in Figure 2.

 

PowerPoint allows you four options for creating a presentation.

1. AutoContent Wizard: The Wizard asks you a number of questions to determine the type of presentation that you want to build. It also guides you in developing the content for this presentation.
2. Design Template: This allows you to choose from a number of backgrounds and colour schemes before developing your presentation.
3. Blank Presentation: This gives you a blank page with no background or colour schemes.
4. Open an existing presentation: This displays a list of recently opened PowerPoint presentations from which you can choose to reopen one of the displayed files. You can choose More Files … if the file you want is not displayed.

We will look at creating a presentation using the Design Template and Blank Presentation features.

 

Creating a new presentation

Having chosen a new presentation from either Design Template or Blank Presentation a ‘New Slide’ dialogue box containing several layouts appears. This is called the AutoLayout. You can choose one of several predefined layouts, depending on what you want to illustrate. Once a layout is selected the name of that particular layout appears to the bottom right hand corner of the dialogue box.

 

When you click on OK, PowerPoint opens this layout in its Normal view, which has a three-pane development area:

• An Outline pane on the left.
• This contains the title of each slide as well as the information typed into the placeholders. Placeholders are boxes with dotted or hatched borders used to hold titles and other text or objects, such as charts, tables and pictures.
• A Slide Development pane, top right A Notes pane, bottom right.

 

Views

This toolbar is located at the bottom left hand corner of the Outline pane (Figure 5). It allows you to move through the different views of your presentation.

 

• Normal view: This it the default view and consists of the three panes (Outline, Slide Development and Notes panes)
• Outline view: This expands the Outline pane to fill most of the screen and allows you to develop the text of your presentation.
• Slide view: This expands the Slide Development pane to fill most of the screen and allows you to develop the slides of your presentation.
• Slide Sorter view: This view shows a small picture of all your slides (a thumbnail – a miniature image of a graphic, document or slide) thus allowing you to move or rearrange the slides in the order that you would like them to appear. You can select a particular slide to view by double clicking on that slide.
• Slide Show view: This allows you to view an on-screen production of your presentation. Clicking the mouse button will change the slides.

 

Placeholders

The information in placeholders is used by PowerPoint to help you know where you are within your presentation document. The titles as well as text in these placeholders appear in the outline pane of PowerPoint’s Normal view. It allows you to move to that particular slide in your presentation by clicking on these titles in the Outline pane.

 

To enter data in a placeholder 

Click anywhere within the dotted borders and begin typing (Figure 6).

 

If you do not need to use a particular placeholder, you do not need to delete it – unused placeholders do not show up in a presentation.

 

Moving a placeholder

1. Click on the dotted border to select the placeholder.
2. Place the cursor on or near the border or box until a four-headed arrow appears.
3. Drag the placeholder to a new location.

 

To add a new slide

Choose New Slide from the Insert menu or click the New Slide icon. The ‘New Slide’ dialogue box appears for you to choose the layout you want.

 

Changing the slide layout

If you decide to change your slide layout, or you want to apply a different format to an existing slide, you can do so by selecting Slide Layout from the Format menu, or clicking the Slide Layout icon . In Microsoft Office 2000, Slide Layout can be selected from the Common Tasks drop-down menu.

 

Design template

Changing or applying a new design template

Each slide in your presentation can have a different design or the same design template. The Slide Design template can be chosen from the Format menu or, in Office 2000, from the Common Tasks menu.

Background and other selections available in PowerPoint have two options: Apply to All and Apply.

Choosing Apply to All will apply your changes to each slide in the presentation, both the existing slides and the slides that will be created in the future for that particular presentation.

Choosing Apply will cause the change to occur only in the slide you are currently viewing.

 

Moving slides – changing the sequence of slides

This can be done in either the Outline view/Outline pane of the Normal view or in the Slide Sorter view, by dragging the slide to the position where you want it. A gray vertical line indicates the slide’s position as you are dragging when you are in the Slide Sorter view, a horizontal line when you are in the Outline view.

 

Working with sound, video clips, photos (graphics)

Sound, video clips and photos are inserted in your slide in the same way you would insert a clip art image. Once these images are inserted they appear in the middle of your slide. They can then be moved or repositioned to any location by dragging. There are specially designed layouts that allow you to include video clips, sound and photos in the ‘New Slide’ dialogue box.

Double clicking on the Media Clip placeholder will bring up the clip art gallery with sound and video clips. You can then select the Sounds or Motion Clips tabs and select the clip to insert.

 

Animating your presentation

Animating a single object

1. Select the object you want to animate by clicking on it in your Slide Development pane.
2. Select Preset Animation from the Slide Show menu.
3. Select the effect you would like to apply to that object.
4. View as a slide show by selecting Slide Show from the Slide Show menu or the View toolbar.

 

To animate more than one object on a slide

1. Choose Custom Animation from the Slide Show menu or click on the Animation Effects icon.
2. The Animation Effects icon will bring up the ‘Animation Effects’ dialogue box from which you can choose the Custom Animation icon.
3. Each object in your slide is listed in the ‘Check to animate slide objects’ box. You can select which objects you want to animate. By clicking on the object name, the object will be highlighted in the preview box.
4. You can click in that object’s checkbox to animate that object.
5. Clicking the up and down arrow allows you to change the order of the animation in the Order & Timing tab. Select the object and move it through the order list.
6. You can choose whether you want your slides to be controlled by either a mouse click or automatically after a specified number of seconds.

 

Animating text and other effects

You can click on the Effects tab and show how the object would appear by selecting from the drop-down menu. You can choose to have a special sound effect and to introduce the text all at once, by word or by letter.

You can also animate your charts by selecting the Chart Effects tab and choosing your options.

Do not include too many effects/ animations in a single presentation or slide since it can distract from the presentation rather than enhance it.

You can click the Preview button to view your animation after making changes.

 

SUMMARY

A) Create a new presentation

Here is how it’s done

1) Choose Blank Presentation from the ‘PowerPoint’ dialogue box.

2) Select the Title Slide from the ‘AutoLayout’ dialogue box.

3) Click in the Title placeholder box and enter the following title:

“Welcome to Our Country”

4) In the Sub-title placeholder enter the name of your country, e.g. “St. Lucia”

5) Insert a new slide by selecting New Slide from the Insert menu.

6) From the ‘New Slide’ dialogue box that appears, select the AutoLayout with the bulleted list.

7) In the Title placeholder of this layout type:

“Discover Our Country”

8) In the bulleted list placeholder enter four sites of interest in your country.

9) Insert a third slide from the Insert menu; choose the same layout as the previous slide.

10) In the Title placeholder enter the following text: “A Little About Us … ”

11) In the Bulleted List placeholder enter the following information relevant to your country:

• Our spoken language is _
• We have a population of approximately _ people.
• The capital of our country is _
• Our airport _ is located _

12) Save your presentation as ‘My Country’.

Display your presentation as a slide show using the Slide Show view at the lower left hand corner of your screen, or choosing Slide Show from the Slide Show menu.

 

B) Applying a design

1. Retrieve the presentation ‘My Country’ that you created in the previous activity.
2. Choose Slide Design from the Format menu or the Common Task menu.
3. Select a design for your presentation.
4. Save your presentation.
5. Display your presentation as a slide show, using the Slide Show view at the lower left hand corner of your screen or choosing Slide Show from the Slide Show menu.

 

C) Rearranging your slides

1. Retrieve the presentation ‘My Country’.
2. In the Slide Sorter view move the third slide to the second position.
3. Save your presentation.
4. Display your presentation as a slide show using the Slide Show view as the lower left hand corner of your screen or choosing Slide Show from the Slide Show menu.

 

D) Changing the background

1. Retrieve the presentation ‘My Country’ that you created.
2. In the outline pane of the Normal view or in the Outline view select your second slide.
3. Select Background from the Format menu and apply to only that slide.
4. Save your presentation.
5. Display your presentation as a slide show using the Slide Show view at the lower left hand corner of your screen or choosing Slide Show from the Slide Show menu.

 

E) Adding graphics

1. Retrieve the presentation ‘My Country’.
2. Add a new slide to your presentation.
3. Choose the layout “Text & Clipart’ or ‘Clipart & Text’ from the ‘New slide’ dialogue box.
4. Double click on the placeholder to add a clip art.
5. Choose a map of the world for your presentation.
6. Enter the title “Make Your Trip a Memorable One”.
7. Enter some extra information about your country.
8. Save your presentation.
9. Display your presentation as a slide show using the Slide Show view as the lower left hand corner of your screen or choosing Slide Show from the Slide Show menu.

 

F) Animating an object

1. Retrieve the presentation ‘My Country’.
2. Select the first slide of your presentation.
3. Click on the Title placeholder.
4. Choose Preset Animation from the Slide Show menu and choose an effect.
5. Save your presentation.
6. Display your presentation as a slide show using the Slide Show View as the lower left hand corner of your screen or choosing Slide Show from the Slide Show menu.

 

G) Animating your entire presentation

1. Retrieve the presentation ‘My Country’.
2. Select the first slide of your presentation.
3. Select Custom Animation from the Slide Show menu.
4. Click OK after animating the slide.
5. Select another slide and animate it.
6. After animating all your slides, save your presentation.
7. Display your presentation as a slide show using the Slide Show View as the lower left hand corner of your screen or choosing Slide Show from the Slide Show menu.