Presentation preparation using Microsoft Powerpoint
For your final project (and possibly for other situations) you will make
a short presetation. Microsoft Powerpoint is one of the parts of Microsoft
Office. This one lets you put together a combination of text and
graphics (and other multimedia) into a series of slides that can be
shuffled and modified and then played on a computer using a projector (or
not), or printed out or both. It also lets you print a series of note
pages of your talk that can be duplicated and handed out to your
audience.
Set up your presentation
Launch Powerpoint and then it will give you a dialogue box in which you
should select Blank Presentation (unless you wnat to open one up). Then
choose a layout. I always choose the first one, and then change things on
the fly.
Now you will be on a new page, ready for your input. First, go to View
Menu, and then Master and choose Slide Layout. Next choose the Format
menu, and then select a background. Change any other aspects of the text
that you would like.
Build your presentation
The basic idea is to add text and graphics to each slide, and then click on
"new slide" down on the lower right of the main screen to get a new
slide. You can choose a layout to help you, but this can be changed.
Text
Is pretty easy. Just change it as desired. Look under format menu for
Font and you can do most things there, or on the menu bar along the top
right of the slides.
Graphics
This is the part that can be tricky.
Use Powerpoint drawing tools
Note that there are some decent basic drawing tools on the left side of
the Powerpoint screen that you can use to draw things.
Inserting graphics
The idea is to take graphics from another program, such as Canvas, get
them into a format that Powerpoint likes, and then place them on the slide
of interest.
The first thing to try is to select the objects in the drawing from your
drawing program, copy them, and then paste them into Powerpoint. This may
work, but it might not or it can be frustrating.
The second and probably more robust way to handle things is to get your
drawing to look the way you like it in Canvas or whatever, and then save
it as a *.tiff file. Then in Powerpoint, under Insert, choose Picture,
select the *.tiff file, and then it should appear on your slide and it can
be moved, resized, etc. If your drawing program gives you some trouble, or
the file is a bit large for Powerpoint, open it first in Adobe Photoshop,
and clean it up by resizing it and possibly changing the resolution. Save
it as a *.tiff file, and then try inserting it into Powerpoint.
Inserting other interesting things
Under the Insert menu, you can see that you can import other things such as
movies or the output of other Microsoft applications such as MS WOrd
Tables or Excel spreadsheets. However, I note that it is porbably easier
to copy and paste many of them.
A note about adding things from the internet
You can often save images and movies from the internet (in the case of
images in Netscape, just click and hold on the image and you can get an
option to save it or copy it).
Think of the rights people have to things that they have created. If you
use something in your presentation, you must acknowledge the source. This
is a good thing to do. Don't misrepresent the information that you use in
your presentation.
Citing the Sites: MLA-Style Guidelines and Models for Documenting Internet Sources
Presenting your presentation
Note that you can reoganize the order of your presetation by using the
Slide Sorter under the View menu. Just drag the slides around unti they
are in the order that you like.
Once you are ready, then under the View Menu, choose slide show. You will
get a few optins in a dialogu box with which you may want to experiment.
Under the print menu, you can print your slides as overheads, or you may
also choose options for printing handouts for your audience (Print
What).
Assignment 8:
Preparing a Powerpoint presentation from your Canvas poster.
Pages maintained by
Prof. Ramón Arrowsmith
Pages last modified on Thurs Nov 7 1997.