How to PowerPoint

A lot of people moan and groan about PowerPoint because there are so many bad PowerPoint presentations out there.  But the way I see it, PowerPoint’s just a tool.  If something done in PowerPoint is no good, tell the person who created the presentation or elearning course.  Don’t blame PowerPoint.

I heard someone say that it’s still PowerPoint’s fault because it’s so easy to use.  That’s just flat out ridiculous.  Why don’t we start blaming pens or keyboards for all of the crap that’s out there.  They’re a lot easier to use than PowerPoint and empower anyone who can type to write to produce worthless drivel.

To prove my point about the power of PowerPoint, I wrote a post for the Rapid E-Learning Blog that shows how you can use PowerPoint to build effective and viable elearning courses.  You’ll still need to start with good instructional design.  However, if all you have to sue is PowerPoint, there’s no reason why you still can’t build a decent course with it.

Below is an example of an elearning course created entirely in PowerPoint and then published with Articulate Presenter.

Click here to view the elearning course.

To learn more, check out the post on the Rapid E-Learning Blog.

While there are a lot of complaints about clip art, the reality is that we still use quite a bit of it.  In previous posts, I’ve shared how to create your own clip art and how to use the same clip art styles to maintain a consistent look.

In today’s post, we’ll explore ways to quickly find clip art using the Microsoft Office online site.   You’ll learn how to:

• Customize how many images you see and how large they are
• Use the clip art properties
• Find images of a similar style
• Search via keywords

Clip Art Tutorial

Click here to view the tutorial.

Here’s a free site that I use quite a bit.  It lets you easily calculate the missing value for an aspect ratio.  I use this a lot when I try to figure out the size of photos or widgets that I want to embed on slides or web pages.

Let’s say you have a picture that’s 800×662 pixels wide, but you can only put a 400 pixel wide image on your blog.  So you need to scale it down, but keep the same aspect ratio.

You can see the aspect ratio calculator in action in the tutorial below.

Click here to view the aspect ratio tutorial.

So now you’re never at a loss to quickly calculate the aspect ratios for any of your multimedia projects.

Do you want to add software demos or “how to” tutorials to your PowerPoint slides or elearning courses?  Well then, Screenr is the the tool for you.  It’s both free and easy to use.  I covered it in detail in this post on how to use PowerPoint as a virtual whiteboard.

Screenr is a free screencasting application that lets you make a video of  your on-screen mouse movements.  It’s great for software demos.  I’ve also seen teachers use it to teach math and other subjects.

Once you have a good video, adding it to your PowerPoint slides is as easy as 1-2-3.  View the tutorial and read the basic steps below.

Click here to view the tutorial.

Here are the basic steps:

• Find the Screenr embed code and copy it to the clipboard.
• Open the developer tab in PowerPoint.  In the control panel, you will find the shockwave properties.
• Add the movie URL in the shockwave properties. Make sure to include the unique video ID.

Screenr is a great screencasting application.  It lets you make videos of your computer screen that you can share with others.  Here’s what I like about Screenr:

• It’s free
• Doesn’t require a download
• Easy to share via Twitter or Youtube
• Looks great on the iPhone or iPod Touch

PowerPoint and Screenr are a great combination.  I like to frame the screencast border around a blank PowerPoint slide to give me a virtual whiteboard.  Then I can use all of PowerPoint’s features as I explain a topic or present a lecture.

This works really well with a tablet PC (which you can see below) because it looks more like a real whiteboard.  It’s a great way to do math lessons, for example.

Check out the screencasts below.  In the first one, I show a demo of how it looks with a tablet PC (although it that demo I used OneNote).

Example of a Virtual Whiteboard

Click here to view the Screenr demo.

Here’s another example of Screenr and PowerPoint.

How to Frame the Screenr Window

In this next example, I explain how I frame the Screenr window around the blank PowerPoint slide.

Click here to view the Screenr demo.

One other thing I really like about Screenr is that the full screen of HD view mode gives you a really clear and crisp image.  Most of those video sites give you a full screen image which tends to make the video blurry because it stretches the video to fit your screen.

Give it a try, I’m sure that you’ll find that the combination of Screenr and PowerPoint is a winner.

PS.  If you’re not familiar with OneNote, check out Microsoft’s OneNote site.  It’s one of my favorite applications.

PowerPoint’s a great authoring tool.  You get a blank screen and some pretty cool animations.  There’s no reason that you can’t mimic some of the same types of animations you see created with Flash.  On top of that, if you use a rapid elearning application, like Articulate Presenter, you can publish the PowerPoint slides and convert them to Flash. 

What Articulate Presenter does is convert each slide into its own Flash movie (.swf).  The .swf will contain the slide content, with audio narration and any animations.  These become a slide#.swf.  You can take the slide.swf from the published data folder and use it as an independent Flash movie.

I like to insert them into web pages, wikis, or even other rapid elearning applications.  In the demo below, I show you how to insert the slide.swf into an Articulate Engage interaction.

Click here to view the demo.

Here are the basic steps:

• Create a PowerPoint slide with some animation
• Sync the animation with narration using Articulate Presenter
• Publish the slide show in Articulate Presenter
• Go to the published data folder and locate the slide.swf.
• You can use the .swf elsewhere.

The Rapid E-Learning blog had a good post on how to create your own handwritten fonts.  I covered it in a bit of detail on a recent post about adding visual interest to your slides.

As soon as the font post was published, I got a bunch of emails asking how to install the fonts.  So here’s a quick tutorial that shows how to install new fonts to your PC.  You’ll see it’s pretty easy.

Click here to view the tutorial.

Here are the basic steps:

• You can right click on a font, and select install. 
• Or open your control panel.  Look for the fonts folder.  Then drag and drop the font to the folder.  It should install automatically.

Sometimes we just get sick of clip art and we can’t afford to buy the images we need from a stock photo site.  And even if we could, it takes for ever to find the right image, if it’s even available.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog offers 10 Sure-Fire Tips for Creating Your Own Stock Photos.  In the post, you’ll learn these ten tips:

• Use enough light
• Better focus
• Capture at the highest quality
• Rule of thirds
• Take multiple shots
• Create visual interest
• Use real employees
• Don’t use real employees
• Get signed releases
• Share your photos

These are ten essential tips for those who want to shoot their own photos.  Check them out.

You don’t need a tablet PC to get the benefits of a tablet PC.  If you have Microsoft Vista or Windows 7 you can enable the the tablet functionality.

However, to get the most out of the tablet functionality, it helps to have a tablet.  In the demo below, I hooked up an older Wacom tablet to see how it would function in Vista with PowerPoint 2007.  As you can see in the demo below , it works well. 

Wacom Tablet Demo

Click here to view the demo.

The tablet functionality gives you a lot of neat features and capability.  One of the things I like is being able to add a personal touch with handwritten text and hand drawn arrows and circles.  It’s a great way to draw attention to the content.

I bought a used Wacom tablet, but you can see that the prices have come down.  It’s worth the investment.

PowerPoint 2010 is going to let you publish your presentation as a video.  You can then convert the WMV to a format that works for your iPod Touch or iPhone.  That’s probably easy enough, if you don’t mind the extra steps.

Or you can use Screenr to create a screencast video presentation.  It’s free and easy to do.

Here’s an excellent example of a presentation that Scott Skibell did.  It’s a great testimony to the Articulate customer service (which I like), but it’s also an excellent presentation that is captured using Screenr.  I think he used Keynote, but it would work in PowerPoint just as well.

Presentation on the iPhone Demo

Click here to view Scott’s demo.

The steps are pretty easy. 

• Just frame the Screenr record window around the PowerPoint slide and start recording.  You can use the page up or page down to advance the slides back and forth.
• If you want to capture the animations, then record from presentation mode rather than using the slides in normal view. 
• Once you have a video recorded, check out the URL in your iPhone or iPod Touch. 

Pretty slick, huh?

Here’s a quick demo I recorded when testing it out with an interactive PowerPoint file.  There’s no audio and probably isn’t the best example because it requires that the user clicks on the screen, but I wanted to see how the animations looked.

Click here to view the PowerPoint demo.