The Powerpoint Tasks will be divided into three different weeks, with three levels of tasks each week.  Powerpoint 1 tasks will deal with the basics:  creating a basic ten slide presentation concerning something you will be teaching within the next three weeks.  Powerpoint 2 tasks will deal with making that presentation a little snazzier:  adding or modifying animations, adding sound and movies.  Powerpoint 3 tasks will involve making your presentation more interactive instead of linear and posting the presentations to your webpages.

 

Email your completed presentation to me as an attachment, and I'll sign you off on the appropriate level.

  

 

TECHNOLOGY TASK #13

Powerpoint 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

BEGINNER LEVEL – Create a basic ten slide presentation covering a topic that you will be teaching within the next three weeks. 

 

  1. Open Powerpoint. 
    1. Powerpoint is one of the programs contained in the Microsoft Office suite.  If you don’t have a shortcut on your desktop, go to Start / Programs and look at the top of the menu.  You should have two Office choices:  New Office Document and Open Office Document.  If you were looking for any previously created Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, or Publisher document, you would click the Open Office Document menu item.  This would open the area of your hard drive or network that has been selected as the default area for things that you create and save in any of the Office programs.

      The New Office Document in the Start Menu will open a box that will allow you to select which program you wish to use to create your document:

                                

      Double-click the Blank Presentation icon to begin your Powerpoint presentation.

 

    1. By default, the first slide presented is the TITLE slide:


           

       



 


You may choose a different format by clicking the boxes to the right of the screen (slide layout area), which have been formatted to make inserting special items easier.

The boxes with the dotted lines are areas of the slide which contain special formatting.  The dotted lines will not show in your presentation, and neither will the words in the boxes.  To type your OWN words that WILL show in your presentation, just single-click in the box and begin typing. 

    1. The boxes to the right that have the pre-formatted slide areas allow you to single-click in the area to insert text, graphical content, or a mixture of both.  You may change the format of any slide at any time, just by having the active slide showing (in the large area of the screen) and then selecting the other format (by single-clicking).  If you hover over each box, a pop-up will explain what that slide format contains.  Most presentations, however, begin with a Title Slide which sets the tone for the presentation.

    2. After single-clicking in each of the Title Slide boxes and typing in your presentation title and subtitle, you are ready to insert a new slide.  You may do this by doing any of the following:

                                                              i.      Insert / New Slide

                                                            ii.      Ctrl / m (Be careful here.  It’s not “n” for new slide, as you might think.  Ctrl/n will open a new presentation, not a new slide.)

                                                          iii.      Single-click the New Slide button which might be showing on your Formatting Toolbar.

    1. Notice that the default format for new slides is one large bulleted list box.  Just single-click another layout if you would like for the slide to be divided into two smaller bulleted list boxes, or half of the screen to have clipart, etc.

      Note:  you may insert pictures or clipart anywhere on a slide.  It does NOT have to be a clipart slide layout in order to have clipart on any slide. 

    2. Continue adding new slides and information until you have a minimum of ten slides.

 

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL – Adding clipart, background design, and slide transitions.

Task:  Add at least five clipart and one picture.  Choose a background design or color, and use transitions for each slide.

 

1.  Clipart:  Click Insert / Picture / clipart.  The Insert Clipart column will appear to the right of your screen:
                                

 
 
 





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Type the kind of clipart picture that you would like to use in the Search Text box and hit the <enter> key.

a. Scroll through the clipart pictures and double-click the one that you wish to  insert. 

b.      Note that when it is inserted, it will have eight while circles surrounding it and a green dot above the one in the middle top.  The white dots are resizing handles, and you should always use one of the four corner white dots to make the clipart larger or smaller;  that keeps the picture in proportion.  The green dot is a rotator handle.  If you move your mouse over the green dot, you will see a turning circle appear.  Just left-click and rotate the picture until you are satisfied with it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


HINT:
 
Note:  Want to turn the clipart around?  PowerPoint lets you reverse the clipart easily.  Just grab one of the side Resizing Handles and move it completely through the picture and back out the other side!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


c.  To move the picture to a different place on the slide, just move the mouse    over the clipart until you see a four-pointed arrow.  Left-click and drag the clipart.

  1. Inserting Pictures or Photos
    1. To insert a picture or photo already on your hard drive, network drive, or floppy drive:

                                                              i.      Click Insert / Picture / From file and dance back to the correct drive (D:, F:, or A: most likely).

                                                            ii.      Double-click the picture.

                                                          iii.      Resize and move if necessary (see above.)

    1. Don’t have a picture already to use? 

                                                              i.      Open Internet Explorer and go to Google (http://www.google.com).

                                                            ii.      If you are at home, click on the Images link.  This page is blocked at school, but if you are at home you can search for images and save them to a floppy or CD to take to school if necessary.

                                                          iii.      If you are at school, just type in the picture topic that you are looking for and hit <enter>.  This will give you a page of links to webpages dealing with that topic.  Many of them will have pictures that you will be able to use. 

                                                           iv.      If you find a picture to use, just right-click the picture and select Save Picture As.  Select your network drive, rename the picture if necessary, and click Save.

                                                             v.      To insert the picture, follow the steps in 2a above.

 

  1. Modifying the Background  
    1. Design -  There are several “Design” background templates that are preformatted and color coordinated.  You may select one by clicking the Design button on the Formatting Toolbar or by clicking Format / Slide Design from the menu bar.  Either of these will open the templates on the working area at the right of the screen:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notice that if you hover over a design you will see a down-arrow on the right side of the thumbnail picture.  If you click that down-arrow, you will be able to choose whether to use that design on one slide or all of the slides. 
* Hint:  it is distracting to use too many different design backgrounds in one presentation.  It is usually a better practice to use the same one for all slides.
* Some of the designs are slightly animated.
* The Title Slide format is a little different than the rest of the slides.

    1. Colors:  If you do not want to use a solid color instead of one of the templates, choose Format / Background and click the drop-down arrow.





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you click More Colors you can mix your own colors.  If you click Fill Effects, you can make some beautiful shadings (Gradient tab) or choose a Texture, Pattern, or select a picture to use for the backgrounds. 

Note:  if you choose a picture, it most likely should be ‘lightened’ considerably.  If you’re not sure how to do that, it would be easier to

*Insert / Picture / From file and then resize the picture to fill the entire slide. 

*Right-click the picture-background and select Format Picture / Picture / Image Control and select Grayscale or Washout.  If you want the same picture for all of the slides, it is easiest to Insert / Duplicate Slide and start with your background already fixed for all slides.

 

  1. Transitions –
    Transitions are the way the slide enters the screen. 
    1. Click Slideshow / Slide Transition.  Your working area to the right of the screen now changes to Slide Transition.  (Notice that you can click the left arrow to scroll back through all of the working areas that you have previously used…) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    1. Notice that there is a Random Transition choice at the bottom.  If you select that and apply it to all of the slides, it will randomly choose one of the transitions for each slide. 
    2. You can also adjust the speed (Fast, Medium, or Slow), and you can tell it to advance by mouse-click or automatically after the number of seconds that you choose.

 

WIZARD LEVEL – Custom Animations – Animate at least four of your pictures or clipart and most of your bulleted slides.

 

In addition to slide transitions, you may use animations for other areas of your presentation:

  1. Clipart:  If you choose animated clipart from the Clipart Gallery, it will be animated with you are viewing your slideshow.  (It won’t move while you are creating or editing the presentation, only when you are viewing the slideshow.)  You may also save animated clipart from the Internet to use in your presentation.  (See 2b on page 4.)
  2. Picture or Clipart Entrances: 
    1. Select the picture by single-clicking it.
    2. Click Slideshow / Custom Animation.
    3. Click Add Effect / Entrance / More Effects and single-click the effect to see a preview of the animation.  When you find one that you like, click OK at the bottom of the box.
    4. In the Custom Animation box, you now have the animation listed:

















      With the picture still selected, decide whether you want the animation to start On Click, With Previous, or After Previous.  You may make other preference changes by trying the different arrow selections for Direction, Speed, and on the animation itself. 

  3. Bullet Animations
    1. Select a slide with bulleted list(s).  
    2. Follow directions above for animated entrances for pictures or clipart.