How to PowerPoint

This post from the Rapid E-Learning Blog introduces some PowerPoint experts I met at a recent conference.  There are also some links to free resources that will help you in your quest to master PowerPoint.

Here’s what you can find in the post:

• PowerPoint MVPs
• Free tutorials
• Free software
• PowerPoint resources
• Valuable elearning blog posts

Check out the post, These PowerPoint Experts Can Make You a Star to get access to the free resources and helpful links.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog has two great posts on how to build custom graphics using PowerPoint.  The goal is to practice these techniques and improve your PowerPoint skills.

You’ll learn:

• to be more fluent with PowerPoint features
• rethink the graphics you can build
• new ways to illustrate the graphics you need

The posts contain quick tutorials and you can download the original PowerPoint source files.

Create Custom Icons

See How Easily You Can Create Graphics in PowerPoint by using an Illustrator tutorial as the basis for this PowerPoint tutorial.

Create a Television Monitor

Here’s How to Get Past a Screen Full of Bullet Points teaches you to create your own television monitor.  This technique could be used for a TV or computer monitor that could hold more information.

Here are three posts I did for the Rapid E-Learning Blog where I showed how to build out some ideas in PowerPoint.

Build a Puzzle

Build a Puzzle Animation in Just a Few Simple Steps walks though the process of building a puzzle sequence that reveals information as the learner advances.  There’s a tutorial as well.

Build a Cool Slide Template

Here’s How I Built That PowerPoint E-Learning Template walks through the process of building out a multi-colored template.  You can also download the PowerPoint files via the attachments link in the tutorial.

Create Your Own Handwritten Fonts

Over 100 Free Handwritten Fonts gives you links to a bunch of free fonts.  You’ll also learn to create your own for free.  Check out the tutorials.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog has a great post on how you can unzip your .PPTX files in PowerPoint 2007.  This is valuable because now can access the images you have in your PowerPoint files.

• Keep all of your images in one location.  Move the media folder to a place where you save your images.  Rename it to match the course and all of your images are now in one place. 

• Quickly save clip art images to your slides and then save the .PPTX file.  It’s easy to just drag and drop images to a PowerPoint 2007 slide.  Add images to your slides and then extract the file to have quick access to all of the images.

Go to the post and view the quick tutorial.  There’s also a link to a free image viewer and a program that lets you unzip your PowerPoint files.

Here are three blog posts I did for the Rapid E-Learning Blog that deal with graphics and visual design.  You’ll learn how use blurred images to direct the learner’s focus and how to quickly create silhouette characters and clip art.

If you don’t have a graphics editor and want to use more than PowerPoint to build your graphics try these:

Paint.net:  Free graphics editor that lets you do most of what you need to do.

Photoshop Elements: Great alternative to the more expensive full version and does all that you need.

Change the Focus of the Image

Blur Your Course Into Focus discusses ways to use a blur filter so that you can direct the learner’s focus.

Create Silhouettes

3 Easy Ways to Create Silhouette Characters shows three ways to quickly create silhouette characters for your slides.

How to Use Silhouettes

Following up the post above, here’s 5 Ways to Use Silhouette Graphics in Your E-Learning Course.  In this post, you’ll learn different ways you can use silhouettes on your slides and in your elearning courses.

These three posts will help you build better graphics for your slides and elearning courses.