Session 4 Powerpoint Basics

There are a number of different ways of putting together a presentation with your PC. The most common is using presentation software such as Microsoft’s PowerPoint, which is where we will start our journey of discovery into the world of presentations and presentation software.

The main advantage of PowerPoint is that it is very, very easy to use and put together a presentation.

What is PowerPoint?

As mentioned before, PowerPoint is Microsoft's Presentation application. A PowerPoint presentation is made up of a number of slides. Although it can be standalone, it is usually used as a visual aid for a formal presentation. A PowerPoint presentation is executed as a slideshow and each slide can be displayed on the screen one at a time. This is the traditional way of creating a presentation. When creating a traditional presentation, be careful not to crowd the slides with too much information. They should not include your whole presentation word for word, just highlights or summary information.

Creating a basic presentation.

When PowerPoint is loaded, your page will display the first slide of the presentation - the title slide.

Each slide can contain "placeholders" for different types of information or can be a blank slide. This first slide has placeholders for text - your title and subtitle. The placeholders do not display or print unless you place information in to them.

Have a good look at the screen - you will see the standard Microsoft Ribbon at the top of the page. In the centre or larger window, you will see your current slide. On the left hand side, you will the slides or outline view. At the bottom right hand corner are the buttons that will change to slide show, slide sorter or normal view as well as a slider to zoom in and out.

Let's start to create a simple presentation about presentations!!!

•    On this title slide, click in the title placeholder, and type PRESENTATION SOFTWARE.
•    In the subtitle placeholder, click and type POWERPOINT 2016


You have now created your first slide - now wasn't that the easiest thing I've got you to do so far in these classes?? Hopefully it looks similar to the following screenshot.

Now comes the hard bit - we are going to add another slide. In the Ribbon, you will see a button titled New Slide.

•    Click on the New Slide button
•    Add title and text as shown

 
•    Click on Add New Slide button

Layouts

When you click on the Add New Slide button, PowerPoint will display the basic slide layout. This will be OK for some of your slides, but there are other layouts that you can choose.

The basic slide layout has an area for a slide title as well as an area to create a bulleted list. In the centre of the slide, you will see a group of six icons. As well as text, you can add different types of objects to enhance your slide.

On this slide, we are going to add a slide title and then an image that relates to presentations. With images, you can add clip art or you can add a picture from a file i.e. an image or photo that you have stored on your hard disk.

•    Click on slide title and type in PowerPoint Image Objects
•    Click on the online picture button (in PowerPoint 2010, this is Clip Art)
•    In the search area, type in presentations and press enter (or Go)
•    Select a relevant graphic by clicking on it and then click on Insert
•    It will then be transferred to your slide

•    From the Format Ribbon, click on an appropriate frame option.

You now have your third slide completed.
 
•    Click on the Home Tab display the main ribbon and click New Slide
•    Click In the Title and type More PowerPoint Image Objects
•    Click on the button for Pictures
•    Browse and Select one of your photos (or just one of the sample pictures)
•    From the format tab, choose an appropriate frame option or effect
•    Slide 4 complete!!

•    Go back to the Home Ribbon and click New Slide
•    Click on Title and type in Adding a Media Object.
•    Click on insert Video button (media object).

There are a range of video formats that are supported by PowerPoint. WMV is the default Windows/Microsoft video format (Windows Media Video).

Select a movie to add. You can just add the sample video or any other video that you may have. If you use a You Tube downloader, you can include a You Tube video - there are plenty of free YouTube or online video downloaders available if you wish to capture the video to your hard disk rather than use the YouTube link.

In PowerPoint 2013, you have a few choices for the type of video you can add.

You can make some choices about how your video is to display as well as some basic editing such as trim and fading the video in and out.

You can also use the Format Ribbon to change the shape of your object or add a frame.

Running a slide show

This is a no frills presentation - we will learn how to enhance our slides and presentations later.

•    To make sure that your presentation starts at the beginning, click on your first slide in the left hand panel.
•    Click on the slide show icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
•    As we have no slide transitions or timing included, just click on the mouse button to progress to the next slide. Don't forget to click onto your movie to see it play, if you have included one.

Or you can use the buttons within the SlideShow Ribbon

The spacebar, arrow keys and scroll button on the mouse will also advance your presentation to the next slide.

Making it Pretty

So far we have created a very basic no frills presentation. Keeping to the theme of simple for today, we will apply a Design Theme to our presentation.

•    Click on the Design Tab

•    Choose a design theme - you can roll your mouse over any of them to preview what your presentation will look like.

•    Make sure that you are on your first slide and run a slide show again to see your now very pretty presentation. Use mouse or keyboard to scroll through the slides.

Once you have selected a Design Theme, you can change the Colours, Fonts and even background style to personalise your theme.

Activity

• Create the sample presentation
• Add a New Slide
• Use the Table button to add a table to your slide

You can also add charts and SmartArt  - these work the same way as they do in Word.

Different Slide Layouts

When you click the New Slide the button, you get the default slide, which is Title and Content, but there are other slide layouts available as well. You can access these by clicking on the little arrow in the corner of the New Slide button. The previews will differ depending on what theme you have applied to your presentation.

Of course, you can also choose a Blank slide and use the Insert Ribbon to add the elements anywhere on the slide.

You can even insert a screen recording if you are game!!

Notes

Notes can be included for each slide – these are great for the presenter as they can contain more information than the actual slide. You can print notes with each slide as well.

 

Slide Transitions

Once you have created all your slides, you can run a slideshow. A plain slideshow will display each slide and progress to the next one when you press the Enter or spacebar on the keyboard or click the left mouse button. They are displayed in order, starting from the current slide. We saw how to do that earlier on in the lesson.

To make a slide show more interesting, you can add transitions. A transition is the manner in which your slideshow progresses from one slide to the next. You can set the same transition for all slides within your presentation, or you can set different transitions for each slide.

Use the Transitions Ribbon to create your transitions.

The transition section is titled “Transition to this slide”, so what you are selecting, is how the current slide will be displayed from the previous slide - i.e. the transition process from the previous slide to the current slide. When you select a transition, PowerPoint will show you a preview of the transition on your current slide.

If you want all of the transitions to be the same, click on the first transition and then Apply To All, otherwise, select each slide and then click on the transition for that slide.

You can choose the speed of the transition as well as a timing option rather than mouse or keyboard click. Be careful with timings and make sure that they are suitable for the actual presentation. There is nothing worse in a presentation for the presenter to be talking about a topic and the wrong slide being displayed.

And to top it all off - you can even choose a sound as part of the transition. This is where you can create a real monster, so please remember my motto “less is more” and avoid “Death by PowerPoint”.

Animations

Transitions determine how a presentation moves from one slide to the next. Along with the transitions, you can also put sounds.

Animation within PowerPoint allows you to animate and create transitions between the individual objects on a slide, not just the slides itself.

Warning though - you can drive your audience absolutely nuts if you go too crazy here!!

This is DEFINITELY where LESS IS MORE.

Preset Animation Scheme

To add Animations to your presentation, use the Animations Ribbon. You can choose a preset animation scheme by selecting an item on the page and choosing an animation from the list.

When you have an object that has a number of paragraphs, such as a list, the animation will be applied to each of the lines.

To preview your animation, select an object and click on an animation type with the mouse. PowerPoint will show you a preview of your animation.

There are three types of animation that can be applied to an object.
•    Entrance – how the object initially appears on the screen
•    Emphasize – how you want the object to behave once it is on the screen
•    Exit – how the object will leave the screen

If you want to apply more than one of these to an object, you will need to use the Add Animation option.

If you don’t like the basic animations, use the drop down arrow and select the More option for the type of effect you wish to apply.

Motion Path

A sure way to ensure “Death By PowerPoint” is to use a Motion Path. A motion path allows you to use a predefined shape/path or use Custom Path to draw your own path that an object will follow.

Animation Pane

The animation Pane is the timeline that is used to control the animation of any or all objects on a slide.

Each item can be fully controlled by selecting an item in the timeline and then clicking on the drop down arrow.

Activity

Add Transitions and animations to the slide show you completed in previous activity


Here is a video on the basics of creating a presentation, You can watch on YouTube or

Printing your presentation

When you are doing a presentation, you often need to hand out slides to the attendees of the presentation. If it is a long presentation, you don't want to hand out reams and reams of paper - one slide to a page. There are choices about what you print and hand out. You may have different notes for yourself than what you hand out.

Printing options are under the File Tab.

The first thing that you can change is whether you wish to print the entire presentation or just selected slides.

Click on the drop down arrow next to Full Page Slides to have full control over how you print your presentation. You can choose to print the presentation with any notes, or you can produce handouts for the attendees.

Handouts allow you to print multiple slides per page – Great for saving paper for a long presentation, while still giving the attendees something to make notes on and to keep.

Outline View will print the presentation in outline mode - no pretty stuff, just a page of each item one after the other.

In the Print Menu, you will have a preview that will show you what the printouts will look like with your selections.
 

Tips for creating a good presentation

There is nothing worse than sitting through a poorly designed and implemented presentation.

My personal pet hate is being in a presentation where the presenter is reading directly from the PowerPoint slides. If that was the case, I’d rather them email it to me and I can read it in my own time!!!

There are plenty of good articles that have some tips on presentations and using presentation tools such as PowerPoint. I have listed a couple of the better ones below, particularly the first one. Please read at least this one before you embark on your first presentation!!!

http://www.mrmediatraining.com/2011/03/10/the-five-most-common-powerpoint-mistakes/

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/10-tips-for-more-effective-powerpoint-presentations.html

https://support.office.com/en-sg/article/Tips-for-creating-and-delivering-an---effective-presentation-f43156b0-20d2-4c51-8345-0c337cefb88b



LESS is MORE

Saving your Presentation

PowerPoint, like all of the Microsoft Office applications, allows you to save your presentation in a number of different formats. The standard formats are included, such as PDF, but there are some others that can be quite useful. One option is to save your presentation as a Web Page or even a video.

Some of the Save Options that you have

Activity

Try Various Save options for your presentation

A suggestion would be to try save as a Video type file as well as JPG. JPGs are quite interesting as it will save each slide as a separate image. You could use the images to create a document or handout of your presentation.

Assessment Task

Just giving you the "heads up". For those that are doing the Social Media class, you will be graded on your Social Media PowerPoint presentation for this unit. If you are not doing the Social Media unit, come and see me to discuss what topic you can use to create your presentation.

Details to follow next week. I don't want to overwhelm you with another assessment task this week!

Session 4 Final Bits of Word includes ASSESSMENT

Printing your Document

If you have a printer installed with the correct printer driver, printing is a simple task.

Saving your document

If you do a plain save, your document will be saved in the latest Word document format (.docx). With Save, however, you have a few different formats that can be used. PDF is probably one of the most popular save choices, but you can also save files as older versions of Word as well pretty much any other type of document.

AS well as Save, you can use the Share option. Share provides file types that are commonly "shared" such as Blog Posts or email.

Export gives you the choice of PDF or XPS - both good formats for use on the web.

There are other formats available under Export as well. These include other Word Processor formats.

Here is an example of the many different Save formats that are available

Your Word Assessment

Details of your Word Assessment here

Session 3 Applications - Word Insert, Page Layout and Columns

Today we will continue with the Insert Ribbon as well as a whole lot of stuff on Page Layout, such as columns, Tabs and Tables.

Insert Ribbon

We start today's class with the rest of the Insert Ribbon goodies. Last week we looked at inserting images and how to place and manipulate them on your document. We also looked at SmartArt and Shapes. We will leave Charts for when we look at Excel (I bet you can't wait) and I NEVER use the Screenshot tool, but I will share with you the way that I capture and use screenshots in Word (and any other application).

Headers and Footers

Headers and Footers allow you to place information that will appear on the top and/or bottom of every page within a document. You would usually place things like page numbers or filenames within a header or footer, or for an assessment task, you could include your name and student number. You can have a different Header and Footer for odd and even pages.

You can use one of the pre-formatted Headers or Footers or you can create your own. To create your own, or to edit an existing Header or Footer, double-click in the Header or Footer on your document. You can then use the Header and Footer Design tools.

Cover Page

Cover pages are great for reports! You can use a template, add a graphic and your report title and other relevant text. Creating a Cover Page is just a click away.

Click on Cover Page, Choose the style you want, and then just modify it with your own information. Voila!

Text

There are a couple of cool tools within the Text section of the Insert Ribbon.

With the Text Box tool, as well as being able to add a plain text box, there are some pretty preformatted text boxes. The advantage of Text Boxes is that they have similar features to pictures and you can move them about the page in the same way.

Quick Parts is where you can create re-usable bits and pieces as well as add Document Property information. I have a signature line that has been saved that I can re-use whenever I want.

Word Art is also treated like an image - it allows you to add funky formatted text to your document that can be used for a header or attention grabber.

Date and Time can be used to add the current date and time to your document - very handy when creating templates and also useful to put in headers and/or footers.

If you would like to see this again, watch the tutorial on YouTube

or you can watch it here.

Tables

There are a number of ways to create tables with Word. The first is by using the Table button on the Insert Ribbon and highlighting on the grid how many rows and columns you want.

As you can see above, by using the Table button, you can visually select the size of the table from the grid or you can use the Insert Table option menu. Again, the preview will show you how it will look in your document – our WYSBYGI again.

Another method is to use the Draw Table toolbar.

Use the Pen Tool to draw lines and the eraser tool to remove them.

Once you have created your table, you can use the Design ribbon, to choose from a range of table formatting and colours.
   
The advantage of using the Draw Table option is that you can create a table of any shape/size. Change the pen colour and style to be even more "creative". You can also use the Design Styles to alter the shadings and colourings of the table.

As well as being able to create an empty table, you can also create a Quick Table, which is a preformatted table style. Once the table is on your page, you can then replace the text with your own.

You can use your mouse to resize any columns or rows within the table. You can also select cells and change lines and shadings individually and you can add or remove columns and rows.

Watch the Video on creating tables on YouTube

Or here it is below.

Paragraph Formatting

Paragraph formatting affects the whole paragraph, not just what you have highlighted. If you want to format multiple paragraphs, you will need to select them.

A paragraph is defined as one or more lines of text finishing with a carriage return. You can use the Show/Hide button to determine where a carriage return is.

Bullets and Number lists

These are the first two tools for paragraph formatting. You can select the tool before you start your list or you can format after you have typed the list.

Justification

Paragraphs can be left aligned, Centred, right aligned, or fully justified. Fully justified lines will align at both the left and right margins.

Line spacing

Paragraph/Font Colours and Borders

By default the colours and borders here work with the whole paragrah, but if you just have some text selected, they will work like Font tools and only the text that is selected will change.

Tabs and the amazing Ruler

I’m a bit of a visual person when it comes to setting tabs. I like to use the ruler. If the ruler is not visible, you can change it in the View Ribbon by checking Ruler box. By default, TABS are set at every half inch across the ruler. (One inch is 2.54cm).

The Ruler is the best way to play with TABS and the best way is to see this in action.

Watch how easy it is to play with TABS using the Ruler on YouTube

Or you can watch it below.

Page Layout

Page Layout options include Margins, paper or page orientation, paper or page size, columns, and page and section breaks. Margins, orientation and paper size are easy and pretty obvious.COlumns and section breaks can get more complicated.

Columns

Columns on their own are quite simple, but columns mixed with section breaks are truly awesome. The best way to appreciate this is to see it in action.

Watch the tutorial on columns and section breaks on YouTube

or watch it here

Proofing Tools

Under the Review Ribbon, you will find your proofing tools. These include spell checker, grammar checker, thesaurus, research and translate. These tools should be used at the end to make sure that your document is accurate for spelling and grammar. I must admit, I don’t like the grammar checker as it always gives me heaps of errors. I guess I tend to type/write how I talk and not always with correct and proper sentence structure, althow I pryde meself on me spellin. You will also find your Word Count tool – just in case you have to write a 500 word essay and you need to keep track of your word count so you don’t go overboard.

You will notice that Word, by default, spell checks as you type - just in case you didn't know what those red squiggly lines were, they indicate a spelling mistake. A word of warning though -  don't just rely on these proofing tools to ensure that your document is accurate as a spell checker is just that and will not always pick on words that are used in the wrong context, but are correctly spelt. English can be a fickle language and can be confusing even for those who speak it as their native tongue!!! Take words like stationary and stationery; there, their and they're; where, wear and we're; your and you're; too, to and two etc. Word can figure out when some of these are used in the wrong context, although spelt correctly, but not all.

As well as spell checking as you type, you can specifically run a spell check on your document or you can look up a particular word to make sure that you are using it correctly. To run a spell check on your document, click on the Spelling & Grammar button in the review ribbon.

When a word is found that is not in the dictionary, you will get a window that will allow you to replace the word with one of the suggestions, ignore the word, or add it to the dictionary.

You can use the right mouse button on any words that have the squiggly lines to see various corrections. With the context menu, you can quickly select an alternative from the list, ignore, add the word to the dictionary, or look up the word.
                                 
You can also change the language from English (US) to any other language.

Options

The last topic for today will be looking at the options, particularly those that relate to the proofing tools. Options can be accessed from the File menu.
 

 

Next Week

Next week we will conclude our exploration on Word by looking at the various Saving options as well as Printing. I will go through the details for your Assessment task on Word and we will also learn the basics of PowerPoint.