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POWER POINT BASICS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Beverly Stone

District Technology Curriculum Coordinator

August1999

Power Point is a powerful presentation program. We will explore some of its features.

Launch POWERPOINT

The first option is to choose

The Templates and Wizards are handy as they do a lot of the work for you but it is better to understand how they were done to allow you the greatest flexibility. Then you can adapt any wizard to meet your own needs.

So let us begin with the Blank Presentation

You are transported to the NEW SLIDE window

Here you can choose from a number of predesigned layouts. To learn the various options in powerpoint please choose the blank layout in the lower right corner.

You are presented with a blank page. The ruler is there to help guide you with placement.

Let us begin with a TITLE SLIDE. Slides can be moved around so order is not critical.

It is the tool whose icon looks like a piece of paper with an A on it.

Times New Roman is the default font and 24 is the default size

(Your First Name)

Powerpoint

Practice

Example

Bev's

Powerpoint

Practice

Center the text in the box by either choosing to Center BEFORE entering the information or highlight the text and Center. The Center tool is the icon with small centered lines of unequal length found on the same tool bar as the FONT selection.

There, you have created your first PowerPoint Slide.

Your choices for font and size will alter the way the test looks on the page.

 

Word ART is a way to format the text in three dimensions.

A window appears that allows you to choose different Word Art styles

Change anything you would like or leave it as is

Often the Word Art will be placed in an odd place on your slide

 

Let's insert a piece of clip art

A picture box is placed on the slide. A dialogue window may open as well. Just click on the X in the upper right corner of the dialogue box to close it.

A selection box opens as well.

Here you can insert clip art, a film clip, a photo, sound, or import your own art or photos.

The clip art is placed on the slide but often not where you wanted it.

If you drag a corner the clipart can become distorted. To prevent distortion, click on the corner and hold the shift key while dragging. It is then resized in proportion.

You PowerPoint Slide now has a text box, word art and clip art. Let us move to another slide

A new slide will open with the same design - BLANK - that we chose in the slide selection box.

This time we will create a simple flow chart.

There are many ways to create a rectangle- from the tool bar, from the Autoshapes, flowchart, or from autoshapes, basic shapes. Any of the three will create the same rectangle.

The rectangle will be filled with whatever color is the default in your powerpoint program.

The type is printed on the color fill

FORMAT AUTO SHAPE will open

After you have tried a few features,

A pop up list will appear. Click on each one for a preview of the various shapes available.

You are trying to fit four of the same size rectangles across the page.

This will COPY the rectangle to the clipboard

This will copy the rectangle. It will be placed on top of the first one.

Another rectangle will be copied on top of the first.

Your slide should now have a TITLE Rectangle, a row of four rectangles and a row of three rectangles all preformatted with color, and font size.

The font or font size should be what you preformatted. If for anyreason it is not or you want to change it,

You should have three rows of boxes with text in them.

There, your slide should now have a very simple flow chart of three rows. Now let us draw lines and connect the boxes.

The mouse pointer turns to a cross

You are going to draw a line across the page about halfway between the diamond and the first row of boxes.

There is a line across the page.

We are now ready to connect the boxes. There are several ways to do this

each of the four boxes in the first row to the horizontal line

the diamond to the line

the diamond to the Title Box

The small lines can be moved by clicking once on the line until there are boxes at each end, then use the arrow keys to move it into position.

Another way to connect flow chart objects is to use connectors.

 

There are lots of choices in here. The fun connectors are the wiggly lines but we will use straight ones to start.

The connector automatically connects to a point at either end or the middle of the box. If the line appears at an angle and you want it straight, then :

The box should nudge gently allowing to fine position the box.

There, You have created a simple flow chart from scratch.

Although yours will look a little different depending on the options you chose, it should look something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now let us add a little pizzazz to our presentation

The design you selected is now applied to the slides you have created. If you are not pleased with your choice.

Now let us close this lesson with viewing the slide show.

The monitor will display your first slide. There is a small arrow at the bottom of your slide.

Power Point pops up a menu

Powerpoint moves to your next slide

This is the simplest way to give a slide show. There are many other options. Music can be added, the slide show can be timed to change slides automatically or to loop continuously.

This packet has only touched the very tip of the possibilities with Power Point. You can even add charts and graphs from your Excel Spreadsheet files.

I encourage you to spend some time trying the features, using the on line help and developing your own POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS.