Making an Impression

1. Making an Impression Understanding Presentation Software

2. What is a Presentation Software? • Software that lets you organize and present information. • Presentations are designed to be shown to a group of people. • Information is presented to the audience as electronic “slides.”

3. Some Uses • Business or sales meetings • Summarizing main points in a college lecture room • Displaying diagrams during a scientific talk • Visuals to accompany a written speech • Etc.

4. What it is NOT used for • Remember that the material in a presentation is mainly used to enhance or accompany the spoken word. • Presentation software is NOT an effective way of presenting information in great detail. That is what the speaker is there for.

5. Origins of Presentation Software • Years ago, it was common for lecturers to use charts, overhead transparencies, projected slides, etc. to provide visuals. • An electronic presentation is an outgrowth of these early visual aids. • Like most other things, only the tools have changed, not the concept.

6. Why use Presentation Software? • In many cases, it is cheaper than doing it the “old fashioned” way. • More efficient – you can use the same software to produce the visuals and also the handouts for the audience, notes for the speaker, etc.) • Only one piece of equipment is necessary to show still pictures, animated pictures, etc.

7. Creating a Presentation • A good presentation should consist of two components • Slides (Single “pictures” that the audience sees). • Notes (Notes for each slide that the presenter will use to read from).

8. Why Use Notes? • Most presentations have a time limit (for examples, ours will be at most 3 minutes). • Many people are not comfortable speaking in front of an audience. • Notes allow us to prepare what we are going to say ahead of time. • We can also time how long we will spend on each slide.

9. Slide Basics • Title – Every slide should have a title. This lets the audience quickly understand what “topic” the slide is covering. • Sub-Titles – These are “bullet-points” under the title that list the “sub-topics” you will discuss while the slide is displayed to the audience.

10. What else can we put on a slide? • Pictures (drawn objects, photos, clipart, etc.) • Graphs • Charts • Animation • Video clips

11. How do we do this? • In this course, we will use software called Microsoft PowerPoint. • All the slides and notes can be produced using the same software. • We can also print out pages of slides to hand out, and even the notes to assist us when doing the presentation.

12. Slide Layouts • When creating a slide, we can select one of several pre-defined layouts. • Layouts are definitions of where certain elements of a slide are placed, font sizes, etc. • This saves us work since we don’t have to “re-do” a slide layout from scratch.

13. Example – column and picture • Sub-title 1 • Sub-title 2 • Sub-title 3

14. Slide Templates • We can apply a standard “look” to all our slides by using a template. • We can also go back and change the “look” of the slides by simply selecting another template. • This saves us work since we don’t have to change each individual slide.

15. Ways to view your presentation • There are three ways to view your presentation • Normal View • Slide Sorter View • Slide Show View

16. Normal View • Use this when you are first creating your presentation. • All of the program’s toolbars are available so you can work on each individual slide.

17. Slide Sorter View • Use this view to look at all of the slides in your presentation at once. • You can easily change the order of your slides by clicking/dragging them into the proper position. • You can also quickly locate an individual slide and double-click it to make changes.

18. Slide Show View • Use this when you are presenting your material to an audience. • This displays the slides, one at a time, on the entire screen. • Use the down-arrow key to advance from one slide to the next.