Briefly introduce the topics that will be covered in this lesson so students are aware of the new skills they will learn. Remind students that all the information is available in the book as a reference so they don’t need to commit anything to memory or take notes.
Students may not know that when they crop or resize an image within PowerPoint, the full-sized original remains available. If the image was a large file, this can unnecessarily increase the size of the PowerPoint file, making it harder to email (takes longer or may be blocked altogether). As well, the original image may contain information not intended for viewing, but it remains available. Compressing images (and deleting cropped areas of pictures at the same time) deals with this situation, optimizing a presentation for emailing or sharing in other ways.You could show students the size of a PowerPoint file (one that contains many large images) in Windows Explorer before and after compressing the images, to show the effect.
While PowerPoint 2010 includes features for emailing and broadcasting presentations, publishing to SharePoint, and saving as a video, sometimes the best way to distribute a presentation may still be on a disc that can be physically sent to someone to view. This may be especially true for long presentations or ones with many embedded photos or videos, which can be very large, or for sending to locations without an internet connection, for example. In this case, the Package for CD feature is a quick and easy way to gather together all the necessary presentation files (the presentation and any linked files) plus the viewer, and prepare a folder for burning to CD. The CD that is created will include information that causes the presentation to run when the CD is inserted in the computer. You can even group multiple presentations together.You can demonstrate this feature just by copying files to a folder; it’s not necessary to burn an actual CD.
This feature allows you to transmit a presentation across the internet to a remote audience, who will watch it in their web browser. Note the features that cannot be transmitted this way, and in particular that audio is not included. Remote viewers will need a telephone service to listen to a presenter, or internet-based phone or audio system. It’s difficult to demonstrate being both a presenter an audience, but you can demonstrate being the presenter and broadcast your presentation, using the Microsoft PowerPoint Broadcast Service, and your students can watch in their browsers to see the effect. (assuming both you and your students have an Internet connection).
The direct emailing of a presentation from within PowerPoint is a time-saving feature, compared to opening up your email client, starting a new email and attaching the presentation. It does require that the computer have an email program already installed and configured. Remind students that email delivery is not guaranteed, especially when the email has attachments or when the attachment exceeds a certain size (e.g. 2MB, 10 MB). It may be blocked by anti-spam programs, firewalls and email service providers. After sending a PowerPoint file as an email, students may need to follow up with an email to check that it was received. When choosing from the available options for emailing, explain that sending the file as an attachment requires that the recipient have PowerPoint installed to open it, whereas sending it as a PDF or XPS only requires that they have the free reader program for those file types (which is often installed on most computers).
If you have a Windows Live account, you can demonstrate how to save a presentation to a shared folder accessible via the internet, using the Microsoft SkyDrive service, and demonstrate how to access presentations you have previously uploaded or that others have granted you access to.
If you are working in an environment with a SharePoint server, to which you have access, you can demonstrate using this feature from within a presentation. If you don’t have access, it’s enough to explain to students what this feature is and that they may encounter it in organizations that have SharePoint.
For those who haven’t seen a SharePoint site before, this image will give students an initial picture of a site. This image shows the marketing area of a corporate SharePoint site (often called an Intranet), with a list of marketing documents. The icon in the leftmost column indicates the type of document: folder, Word document, Excel spreadsheet, etc. Users may click on the document to open it, or use the menu buttons to perform other actions.
Students should learn that not everyone they interact with may have a copy of PowerPoint, or not a current version, so may not be able to open presentations they share with them. If they are unsure what software a recipient has, saving their presentation in one or more other formats is a courtesy they should consider. Be sure to review the different formats listed in the slide and discuss when each might be appropriate. For example, almost everyone can open a PDF or XPS file without needing to install any additional software, as the readers for these file types are usually already installed on most computers. The same is true of images and videos. When in doubt, sending a PDF or XPS as a first step is usually a good choices. Note that PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 use the same file formats.
By now, students will have had some experience viewing their slides as a real presentation. However, they may not yet have noticed, nor been instructed, on all the tools available when delivering the presentation. The starting point is of course to switch to slide show view, using one of the methods on this slide, starting either at the beginning or from the current slide. As a tip for students, you might suggest that they have their presentation in slide show mode with the first slide (a welcome slide, for example) on-screen before the audience arrives, rather than having to start their computer, navigate to the presentation, and start it, with the audience watching.
There are many ways to control the show and advance slides during a presentations. This slide shows the buttons available in the lower left corner of the screen, while the next slide covers keyboard shortcuts.
Students may wish to have this handy chart printed out in front of them when giving a presentation.
Review the options available in the Slide Show Options dialog so that students know how to change them if they have preferences, or are using a different computer where the settings have been changed. If students plan to use annotations, they may wish to set a default pen color that is visible on their slides. If the presentation has timings associated with the slide, and if the slides are set to automatically advance, students should check that “Using timings, if present” is selected, or conversely, that Manually is selected if they prefer not to use timings this time. We’ll come back to Presenter View in a moment, as it’s also available on the Slide Show tab.
There are many reasons why a presenter might want or need to temporarily hide a slide from a show: it contains sensitive information not suitable for the current audience; it contains mistakes and there isn’t time to correct them; etc. Hiding a slide doesn’t delete it, just excludes it from the slide show.Creating custom slide shows within a presentation is a convenient way of reusing slides for multiple audiences, selecting only those that are appropriate in each case, without having to create multiple PowerPoint files.Be sure to demonstrate using these features and running the slide show to see that slides are hidden
Using the presentation tools to annotate a slide can add some interactivity to a presentation. You can use the pen and highlighter to circle or highlight points or objects on the screen that the audience is particularly interested in or questions, or simply to emphasize their importance. At the end of a presentation, you can choose to save those annotations for later review. You can’t, however, type notes on a slide.
Rehearsing a presentation allows a presenter to smooth out their speech, discover mistakes, know the content in their slide show well, and generally feel more comfortable when delivering a live presentation. The rehearsal feature in PowerPoint allows you to record the time used for each slide and gives you a total time for the presentation, which is helpful when you have a specific time to fit. A presenter may need to trim some slides or content to fit a shorter time, or add more content or pauses for questions to fill a longer time. The recorded timings can also be used to automatically advance a presentation if desired.
Recording a presentation is very similar to rehearsing one. The main difference is that annotations and speech recorded through a microphone are also saved, so that the complete “as-delivered” presentation can be replayed later, or shared with those that couldn’t attend.
Most modern computers and laptops can display on two screens (e.g. a laptop’s built-in screen, and a connected projector). This allows a presenter to use Presenter View, in which the slide show is displayed using the projector, for example, and the presenter’s notes and presentation tools are displayed on the laptop screen, for the presenter’s eyes only. A presenter can always print handouts as a backup in case of any technical issues with using this view and two displays.This feature may be difficult to demonstrate if you or students do not have two displays.
Review the topics covered in this lesson to remind students of what they have learned and accomplished, and to invite questions on any topics not entirely clear.
