How to PowerPoint

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.

Most of us aren’t audio engineers.  We just want to hit the record button and end up with good sounding narration.  We definitely don’t want to do a bunch of tweaking.  If only it was that easy.  Well, it could be.

First, you probably think that the microphone that you’re using sounds fine.  And it might.  However, if you compare it to other microphones, you might find that’s not the case.

Most people I know use headset microphones because they’re portable and typically inexpensive.  But are they the best to use for even simple narration?  You be the judge.

Here’s a demo tutorial I did comparing my headset to a desktop microphone.

• $30 headset
• $72 desktop (with no pop filter or any other type of adjustment)

As you can hear, the desktop microphone has a better sound.  I’d invest in a desktop microphone if you do a lot of recording or expect people to listen to your presentations. 

I use the Samson microphone and am happy with it.  And it’s relatively inexpensive.  You can get them for about $70, now.  It’s worth the investment.

Improve Audio Using the Levelator Tutorial

Click here to view the Levelator tutorial.

Once you have a decent microphone and record your audio, use “The Levelator” to make it sound better.  It’s super easy to do and will give your narration a richer tone.  Is it perfect? NO.  But it’s better than nothing.  And overall, I’ve been pleased with the results.

PowerPoint is a great authoring tool for elearning.  It’s easy to use and combined with a rapid elearning tool you can publish your courses quickly.  If you don’t have a Flash programmer on staff (OR want to save time and money) it’s a great way to go.  I did a presentation a while back where I outlined my elearning strategy.

Click here to view the presentation on elearning strategy.

One of the challenges, though is that many people who use PowerPoint for elearning end up creating very static and linear course.  In some cases, this is fine.  But, as a matter of practice it’s best to make your elearning courses more engaging and interactive. 

If you do want more interactivity, check out the Rapid E-Learning Blog’s post on  How to Add Scenarios to Your Rapid E-Learning Courses…Rapidly!

Click here to see one of the examples.

There are some great examples and a tutorial that walks you through the steps. so that you can build your own interactive elearning scenarios.

The cartoon above was inspired by a conference I attended.  In the session, the presenter went on and on about how PowerPoint was not effective for elearning and used PowerPoint to teach us this.

At another conference, I peeked in on a class that was teaching people how to build elearning courses.  Now the class itself wasn’t a hands-on workshop.  No, it was just a class that talked about learning and how to present ideas in an elearning context.

The irony was that this instructor had a plain white PowerPoint slide that was filled with about 15 bullet points.  You’d think that considering his use of multimedia to teach his pupils, he’d have applied some of his elearning principles to the slides he was using?  They’re not that different.

Anyway, enough of the diatribe.  Here’s a post from the Rapid E-Learning Blog that covers What Everybody Ought To Know About Using PowerPoint for
E-learning. 

As you’ll see in the demo, PowerPoint’s a very effective tool for elearning.  In fact, considering the cost, ease of use, and some of the new features in PowerPoint 2007 (and the upcoming PowerPoint 2010) I’d say that PowerPoint will continue to be the elearning tool of choice for quite a few more years.

Just to show that the critics are wrong, here are links to examples built in PowerPoint.  They were all published using the Articulate Studio ‘09.  There’s a free 30-day trial, if you’re interested in creating your own rapid elearning courses.

CPR Prototype Course

  CPR Prototype Course: This demo was built with just 20 slides.  The first slide is a Flash animation, the simulation activity is built in Articulate Quizmaker ‘09, and the rest is all PowerPoint slides.

Office Ergonomics Course

 Office Ergonomics: This example combines PowerPoint, Engage, and the older version of Quizmaker.  I like it because it shows how the rapid elearning tools can work together to create both an interactive and engaging course.

Frog Dissection Demo

Frog Dissection Demo: I built this in PowerPoint to show a person I met at a conference that you can create an interactive and engaging course. 

Beer Brewing Tour

Beer Brewing Tour: This was submitted for the Articulate Guru Awards.  I know the author.  He was a relatively new user and this was built in a couple of evenings…at a pub, of course.

Evernote Overview

 Evernote Overview:  This is a great example of nice visual design and effective use of the PowerPoint animations to teach people about Evernote’s features.  Check out the cool scroll animation in the iPhone section.

I think you’ll agree that these are excellent examples of what you can with PowerPoint.  Of course, no one’s suggesting that PowerPoint replaces sound instructional design or effective use of graphics.  But then again, PowerPoint’s just a blank screen like Flash or any other authoring environment.  If you have a beef, it’s not with PowerPoint.  Go talk to the person who’s using it to bore you to death.