MS PowerPoint program is used for presentation purposes. You will learn how to create slides, basic formatting, and make animations. As part of this Lesson, you will also learn how to integrate multimedia files in MS PowerPoint. Finally, the criteria for a good presentation are presented and discussed.
Uses of MS POWERPOINT
Microsoft PowerPoint is a program that allows users to design a presentation that consists of multiple slides. These slides may contain images, text, video clips, and related types of information. PowerPoint is useful for delivering a speech because the user can utilize text on the screen to remind him or herself of the information to be conveyed to the audience as well as to entertain or explain graphs, charts, and related data.
The first thing you need to know is to open a document, create a new one, save your document, and print it.
Home Tab
The home tab consists of the basic formatting tools and five sections, Clipboard, Slides, Font, Paragraph, and Editing. Clicking the down arrow beside any of the icons here will drop down more options for that tool. Each section except slides also contains an arrow in the bottom right corner which will open a window containing the options found in that section.
MS PowerPoint Window
The clipboard allows you to cut, copy, paste and copy formatting from one place to another. The slides section has tools to add new slides, change the layout of a slide, also reset or delete a slide. Both the New Slide and Layout sections offer drop-down menus with predefined slide layouts to use. The Font section of the ribbon provides a section to handle the basic text formatting including bold, underline, strikethrough, highlight, and font types. The Paragraph section provides icons for bullets, lists, justify, line spacing, indents, and text direction. You can also access tools to align the text vertically within a section and add SmartArt graphics. The Drawing section gives you a large number of shapes, lines arrows, and flowchart pictures.
The arrange icon is used to bring an item forward or backward on the screen or group and ungroup objects. The quick styles icon gives a drop-down with predefined shape style options or you can use the shape fill, shape outline, or shape effects icons to create your own styles. The Editing section of the toolbar allows you to find, replace and select items. The select option gives you the ability to select all, select objects, or select text with similar formatting.
Insert Tab
The insert tab has five sections for inserting most types of objects. They include tables, illustrations, links, text, and media clips
MS PowerPoint Insert Menu
The Table section only has a drop-down menu that offers a grid to create a new table, insert table, draw table, convert text to table for the selected text. When working on a table you will have two additional tabs along the top of the ribbon, the design and layout tabs.
The Illustrations section allows you to insert pictures, clipart, photo albums shapes, SmartArt, and charts. After inserting or selecting a picture you are provided with a new toolbar, this toolbar gives you the ability to change the brightness, contrast, shape, position, text wrapping, and other options for the picture. Clicking off the picture or on one of the other tabs will take you back to the standard toolbars. The Shapes option of the Illustrations section allows you to insert lines, arrows, boxes, basic flowchart shapes, and a number of others. The SmartArt option provides features like org charts, flow charts, illustrated lists, and processes. The Chart option offers more options for your charts.
The Links section provides options for inserting hyperlinks,
or actions. The Actions option allows
you to link an item to a hyperlink, program, sound, or macro. The Text options
in the text section include a text box, Header, and Footer, WordArt, date and
time, slide numbers, symbols, and objects. There is a lot of option in here to set up on your own or you can use Word predefined options. The Media Clips
include Sounds or Movies. A large number
of file types can be added including, mp3, midi, wav, wma, wmv, avi, and many
others.
Design Tab
The Design Tab has three sections which are Page Setup, Themes, and Background. The Page Setup provides you with the tools to slide size and orientation. The slide size option allows for some predefined sizes like a letter, legal, overhead, and tv aspect ratios like 4:3 standard resolution and 16:9 widescreen. The Themes section gives predefined colors, fonts, and effects or you can choose your own. The Background section lets you choose a background style or hide the background on the selected slide.
Animation Tab
The Animations tab contains three sections which are preview, animations, and transitions to this slide. The preview section will show you the current slides animation to allow you to check it is the way you want it. The Animations allows creating your own animations for use in the slide. The Transition to This Slide is used to apply different transitions to be used between slides like fades, slides, and many more. You can set options for speed, sounds, and timing.
Slide ShowTab
The Slide Show Tab contains three sections which are start slide show, set up and monitors.
MS PowerPoint Slideshow Tab
The start slide show section is used to start your slide show either from the beginning of the current slide. You can also use this section to create a custom slide show. Custom slide shows can be used to create one thirty-minute presentation and one sixty-minute presentation using the same set of slides but omitting some for the shorter show. The Set-Up consists of setting up a slide show, recording narration, and rehearsing timings. In the Monitors section, there are the tools to change the resolution of the slide show where you can choose which monitor to display it on if you have multiple monitors and use presenter view if you have multiple monitors.
Review Tab
The Review Tab offers three sections which include proofing, comments, and protection.
Figure 43: MS PowerPoint Review Tab
The Proofing section provides the standard spelling check, a thesaurus, research tools that include MSN search, Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia, and an online translation service called Wordlingo. The Comments section allows you to add comments to a document for easier collaboration. You can cycle through the comments to find out what notes you left for yourself or others and you can delete a comment that was made when it is no longer relevant. The Protect section gives you options to add a password and protect the document. You can restrict changes to formatting and editing or the whole document.
View Tab
The View Tab offers six sections which include presentation views, show/hide, zoom, Color/Greyscale, window, and macros.
MS PowerPoint View Tab
The Presentation Views section switches you between normal, slide sorter, notes page, slide show, slide master, handout master, and notes master. Normal show you one slide in the center with thumbnails of all slides to the left of the screen. Slide sorter fills the center with thumbnails of all slides which you can drag around to sort them. The notes page view shows the slide on the top section and notes you add in the bottom section.
The slide show will start the slide show from the beginning. The Slide master, handout master, and notes master views allow you to change what the themes of the presentations will follow by working with a master setup. Each of these master views also provides another tab to the ribbon. The Show/Hide section will toggle certain tools on or off the screen including rulers, gridlines, and message bar. The rulers will show along the top and left sides of the screen. Gridlines will cover your entire document inside the margins. They will be visible on-screen but don’t print. The message bar can only be displayed when there is a message to be displayed.
One common reason for the message bar to display is when macros have been enabled or disabled. The Zoom section provides tools to zoom into or out of the document. You can choose your own zoom factor or use one of the predefined zoom factors.
The Color/Greyscale allows you to switch between color, grayscale, or pure black and white. This will allow you to see how slides will look when printed on a black and white printer. The Window button will open your current document in a new window. The arrange all button will take your currently open windows and stack them one on top of the other. This is also where you can easily switch between windows.
The Macros section provides the tools required to work with and create basic macros. You can view existing macros or record your own. Choose record macro from the drop-down and then perform the functions you do often, like change the page layout, and style of the document. Once you have done those tasks then stop recording. You will be able to use that macro over again to shorten the steps you need to take every time you need to perform that set of tasks.
Criteria for a Good Presentation
Presentation software can be a wonderful tool if used
correctly or can be a dangerous distraction that interferes with communication
rather than facilitating it and the line between the two is thin. A good
presentation should be prepared based on some criteria for a good presentation, especially in slide style, presentation content, presentation clarity, and
presenter.
For a presentation slides style, do not put too much information on the slide, seven lines per slide would be enough. Also, use visuals where possible. For presentation content, make sure you include self-introduction, an overview of the presentation, references complete (at bottom of slide), and the subject body of the presentation. Regarding the presentation clarity, use short statements, sweet and focus to the point, easy to understand, covers the subject completely, and be precise. For a presenter, ensure clarity of speech and presentation style are maintained throughout the presentation.
Ensure that you present your points with power, not just PowerPoint. The following are some of the important tips for effective presentation:
Know your audience
Make sure you know well your audience by
putting yourself in their shoes and understanding what they need. Keep the
audience in mind throughout the preparation of your presentation. Understand
their level of expertise.
Create a clear, logical structure
Create a clear, logical
structure that will help your audience understand your work. Provide a brief
overview of your presentation, introduction, and concise background of the
work. In the main part of the presentation, talk about your work, what and why
you did it, and the main findings. Keep a clear focus on what is important and
interesting to your audience. Don’t fall into the trap of feeling that you have
to present every single thing that you did. Select a “take-home message” i.e if
my audience remembers one thing from my talk, what do I want it to be? Finally,
summarize your main results and discuss their meaning. This is your opportunity
to give the audience a strong take-home message and leave a lasting impression.
Note that the attention of the audience is usually between 15 and 20 minutes.
So, for longer talks, try to keep time and re-engage people’s interest and keep
their attention focused by switching to a new section or topic.
Prepare your visual materials carefully
Treat slides as
visual support for your audience, rather than as a set of notes for you. A good
slide might have around three clear bullet points on it, written in note form.
As a general rule, avoid reading from your slides; you want the audience to
listen to you instead of reading ahead. Using clean texts, darker-colored text
on lighter-colored backgrounds, and presenting data as figures instead of
complete sentences results in easier-to-comprehend slides. Use diagrams and
images to explain text since a good diagram can be far easier for people to
understand than words alone. Choose a standard clear font, like Arial or Times
New Roman, and make sure that the size is large enough to be seen from the back
of the room. Layout the slides so that the elements are properly spaced. It is
better to split a slide into two or three separate slides instead of
overfilling one slide. Although your time is limited, your number of slides is
not! Omit connecting verbs.
Talk in “spoken English” style, not in “written English” style
Change the style of the written phrases into that of spoken phrases.
Written English has a very formal style with complex vocabulary and grammatical
structures. This level of complexity is possible because readers can take their
time reading papers to understand the content fully and can look up unfamiliar
words or grammatical phrases as needed. The diagram below shows some examples:
Presentation Language
Practice your presentation and practice again
Public speaking needs practice, especially for the first time. Good preparation and practice will give you confidence. Most confident speakers do lots of preparation and use notes well. Make a simple set of notes to jog your memory. If you are speaking instead of just reading, you can better engage with your audience and capture their attention. As you rehearse, you will probably notice some words that are awkward to say, particularly if English is not your first language.
Remember the 10-20-30 Rule for Slideshows
This is a tip
from Guy Kawasaki of Apple who suggested that slideshows should contain no more
than 10 slides that last no more than 20 minutes and font size of not less
than 30 points.
Concluding remarks
Remember the importance of knowing your audience, giving yourself time to prepare thoroughly, structuring your talk appropriately, and, don’t panic!