PowerPoint & Presentation Software
PowerPoint | Other presentation software | Examples of presentation
PowerPoint
Microsoft's PowerPoint has become a popular option for instructors to enhance their lectures or with which to give presentations. PowerPoint can include textual, audio, visual, and video elements. By uploading them to Toolkit or elsewhere online, instructors can make them available to students as lecture notes. Presentations can also be saved to zip drives for easy travel to conferences.
Getting started: Simple enough: open the program and choose either to create a slideshow using an existing template, or start from a blank slide. Feel free to ignore or delete any existing text boxes (e.g. "Click to add title"). It's easy to create your own. Most of what you need appears under the "Insert" menu. Here, you can add text boxes or pictures or multimedia, depending on what you need.
Adding text: From the "Insert" menu, choose insert text box. Then drag your mouse over the area you'd like the text box to appear. Change the shape, size, or position of the text box anytime by dragging one of the corners. Add text as you would in a word processor. Manipulate the size, font, style, etc. with the toolbar at the top.
Adding images: To include pictures, you'll need to have them saved on your computer. (PowerPoint comes pre-loaded with clip art, which you can also use.) This means either locating images online and saving them, or scanning them to your computer, portable disk drive, or Home Directory, and then moving them to your machine. (The former TTSP has a useful introduction to scanning images.) Then, from the "Insert" menu, choose Picture --> From File... and locate the image on your computer. Change its position or size by dragging it with your mouse.
Adding new slides: Use the "Insert" menu, New Slide. Or right click in the Slides view (usually on the left) and choose New Slide. PowerPoint offers a sample layouts window to choose from. Blank is always an option. Again, feel free to add or delete to these layouts as you wish.
Sorting slides: Choose Slide Sorter under the "View" menu to see an overview of your presentation. Here, you can easily click and drag slides into the order you would like. Or copy or delete them. You can also add transitions and animations through the "Slide Show" menu.
Changing the template and look-and-feel: You can always make global changes to your slideshow template through the "Format" menu --> Slide Design. Or you can globally change the textual attributes of your slideshow through Slide Master. See the links at right for some principles of good presentation design.
Presenting the slideshow: Simply open your saved presentation and choose the "Slide Show" menu --> View Show. If you plan to show your presentation from another computer, you may need to "Package" your presentation to include any associated files, such as images or audio clips. This option is in the "File" menu.
Other presentation options
Of course, many other options exist for presentation software. OpenOffice is an open-source office suite with a presentation program. And Google has recently released its own online office suite that includes presentation software, with the added benefits of collaborating, sharing, and accessing over the Internet. Macs have multiple software options too, including Keynote.
Examples of presentations
Want to see some examples of how other faculty and instructors are using presentation software in their classes? Check out:
- [TK]
- [TK]