How to PowerPoint

I work on a 30 inch monitor.  So when I create a slideshow in PowerPoint and want to play it back, it fills my entire screen.  This can be a little overwhelming.

On top of that, when I do a video tutorial I may already have my screen recorder set to a specific resolution like 960×600.  I need to be able to do my screen recording and playback the slide show in the same window.

Here’s a quick tip to help set your slide show playback to a resolution that works with the screen recorder.

Here are the basic steps and then you can watch the tutorial below.

• Go into Slide Show and then select Set Up Slide Show.
• Select browse by individual window. This creates a scalable window that you can position inside the screen recorder.
• I always choose the lowest resolution.

PowerPoint Screencast Tutorial

Click here to view the tutorial.

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.

Most software tutorials are built using screenshots of the application or using a screencast video like those from Screenr. 

What’s cool about PowerPoint is that you can combine those techniques to create your software demos.  Or you can just build it in PowerPoint without the screencasting application.

In the post, Here Are Some Time Saving Tips for Your Next Software Demo, I wrote for the Rapid E-Learning Blog, I showed some ways that PowerPoint can be effective as an authoring tool for software demos.  You can even make them interactive, which you can see on that post.

Compared to older versions, PowerPoint 2007 makes this even more viable because you can easily right-click and swap out images.  Thus if the application’s screen changes after building your demo, it’s just a matter of right-clicking and inserting the updated images.  All of the interactivity and animations will still be intact.

Having produced hundreds of screencasts and software courses, I can tell you that PowerPoint is a very effective tool for software training.  Is it the best tool? Not always.  But for a lot of software training, it’s a good tool.  And in many cases a lot faster and easier to work with than a screencast video that requires more production (and usually a lot more editing).

Check out the blog post on the Rapid E-Learning Blog to learn more.  Be sure to watch the demo and try the interaction on the last slide.

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.