Training Room 1

Project 3: Digital Presentation Skills

 

Training Room 1: Creating a PowerPoint 2007® Presentation

 

What can you do with PowerPoint?

 

With Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 you can create effective and professional-looking presentations complete with handouts, engaging training sessions, memorable slide shows, and stunning photo albums. With PowerPoint 2007, it is quick and easy to create attention-grabbing presentations that combine text, graphics, audio, and video. You can make your presentations even more professional by adding charts, tables, diagrams, animations, special effects, and more.

 

Why use PowerPoint?

 

PowerPoint is a powerful application in the Microsoft Office suite. PowerPoint is designed to help you deliver digital presentations that will engage and focus your audience. PowerPoint is simple to use, and it is easy to get professional results.

 

What will I learn in Training Room 1?

 

In Training Room 1 you will learn

• about new features in PowerPoint 2007
• how to build slides and enter text
• how to edit your presentation by adding and deleting text and slides
• how to use different views to arrange your slides
• how to save your presentation to a folder

The estimated completion time for Training Room 1 and Time to Practise 1 is four hours.

 

How can I improve my learning?

 

To really grasp what you’re learning, you can

• read and watch demonstrations in Office Online PowerPoint Help and How-to to discover some of the main features and general skills for using PowerPoint (you‚Äôll get more information on the Office Online website in Training Room 1)
  
  
• complete the Time to Practise activities to learn the software

When it’s time, how do I get started building my presentation?

Before you begin creating your digital presentation, it is important to spend some time planning and preparing. Doing so will keep you focused on your objective as you build your presentation.

 

Step 1: Determine the purpose of your presentation.

 

Your presentation might be intended to

• train, educate, or inform your audience
• report findings from research
• persuade your audience to take action

Step 2: Determine what you want your audience to learn from your presentation. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the point of my presentation?
• What message do I want my audience to remember?
• Who is my audience?

Your audience might be any of the following or someone else entirely:

• students
• employees
• peers
• customers
• teacher
• boss

Understanding your audience will help set the tone and the feel of your presentation. Will your presentation be formal or informal, exciting or informative, professional or humorous? Knowing your audience will determine how you structure your presentation, because how you communicate with your peers is different than how you communicate with your boss.

 

Ask yourself the following questions about your audience:

• What do they already know about the topic?
• What is their attitude or experience on the topic?
• What is the age range of my audience?
• What are they expecting from my presentation?
• What will keep them interested in my presentation?

When you take time to consider these questions, you will be able to customize your presentation to keep your audience engaged.

 

Step 3: Set a timeline and estimate how long it will take you to do each of the following. Then you’ll be ready to start completing each bullet. Before you know it, you’ll have a presentation.

• Research and gather information.
  – Use credible sources.
  – Properly cite ideas, quotations, facts, and surveys.
  – Develop and conduct your own surveys, interviews, questionnaires, or experiments.
  
  
• Create your presentation.
  – Enter and format information onto slides.
  • Develop a strong opening to introduce your topic.
  • Build slides to support your ideas.
  • Limit the amount of text per slide; be clear and to the point.
  • Keep your audience‚Äôs interest level and attention span in mind.
  • Wrap up your presentation with a closing slide that reinforces your message.
    
    
  – Enhance your Presentation.
  • Add graphics, charts, and multimedia.
  • Include links, effects, and animation.
    
    
• Collaborate and present the presentation.
  – Review your presentation, checking for errors and omissions.
  – Request a constructive review of your presentation.
  – Review the flow of ideas and organize slides for delivery.
  ‚Äì Rehearse timings for an auto-run presentation that isn’t too fast or too slow.
  – Prepare speaker and presentation handouts.
  – Prepare to present and publish the presentation, including practising using presentation equipment on location, if possible.

How do I make my presentation professional?

 

Follow these tips for creating a professional slide show:

• Format text consistently on each slide by limiting the number of fonts, sizes, and styles.
  
  
• Apply coordinated and consistent colour and formatting schemes to text and background, and choose fonts (and size), colour, and background colours that are easy for your audience to read.
  
  
• Insert graphics, tables, charts, or video to support or clarify your message.
  
  
• Use animations to highlight information on slides.
  
  
• Apply transitions between slides.
  
  
• Use special effects sparingly, thoughtfully, and consistently for the greatest impact‚Äîtoo many or random effects can be distracting.

Ready to get started?

 

From this point on you will do the bulk of your work in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007. Each training room is set up in a PowerPoint presentation. From each training room, you will be instructed to watch demonstrations. These demonstrations are also available in the Toolkit. You may want to open the following videos now so that they will be easily accessible to you as you complete the training rooms.

• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Screen
• PowerPoint Help
• Accessing a Presentation Template
• Accessing a Presentation Theme
• Accessing and Applying Different Layout Options
• Arranging Slides
• Saving to a Folder

Remember to complete each training room before starting the related Time to Practise activity. Also remember to save your training room and Time to Practise activities in your INF1070 folder.

 

 

You are now ready to start working in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 to learn its features and how to use them effectively. Now open Training Room 1: Creating a PowerPoint 2007 Presentation.

 

INF1070 Learn EveryWare © 2009 Alberta Education

Training Room 1: Creating a PowerPoint® 2007 Presentation

 

Time to Practise 1

 

Instructions

 

At this stage in your life, you may be starting to think about your future and the possible career paths you wish to take. Knowing what you are good at and what you are interested in goes a long way to helping you make career decisions. As you gain more life experience and develop new skills, it is a good idea to assess your career goals and possible career pathways.

 

For this activity you will use the ALIS website to create or update a personal inventory of your skills, interests, values, and attributes in order to make informed connections to possible occupational choices. Communicate the findings of your investigation by creating a PowerPoint presentation that you will use to practise the skills you learn throughout the course.

 

In this exercise you will apply all of the knowledge and skills covered in Training Room 1. There are two parts to this Time to Practise activity:

 

Part 1—Career Connections Investigation

 

Step 1: Go to the ALIS website “Self-Assessment Tools.”

 

Step 2: Complete at least three of the ALIS self-assessment tools.

 

Step 3: Using the search tool on the ALIS website, find the “My Personal Inventory” worksheet. Summarize your findings using the worksheet.

 

Step 4: Using the search tool on the ALIS website, find “OCCinfo” to view over 500 occupational profiles to match your personal inventory.

 

Step 5: Choose three careers that interest you. Print or summarize important information from the profile sheet. You will use this information in Part 2 of this exercise.

 

Step 6: Be sure to spend some time exploring the ALIS website. There are a number of related activities that are worthwhile to guide you on your career pathway.

 

NOTE: If you have already researched careers in another Information Processing course, you can use your research from that course for this activity. Locate your research from the other course, and then revisit the ALIS website and explore different activities to reassess and update your “My Personal Inventory” worksheet and career research.

 

Training Room 2 teaches you how to copy and paste text. If you already know how to copy and paste, you can copy and paste text from your document into the text placeholders on the PowerPoint slides that you will create in Part 2 of this activity.

 

Part 2—Creating a Basic Presentation

 

Once you have information from your career connections investigation, you will create a basic presentation that you will modify and enhance as you work through the other training rooms of this course. In Time to Practise 1, you will begin building a basic presentation by entering information from your career investigation into the slides. Your presentation at this point should be basic with no formatting or enhancements.

 

Step 1: Open PowerPoint and create a Blank Presentation. Title your presentation “Career Connections.”

 

Step 2: Add slides to your presentation that have the following information on them:

• outline slide to provide an overview of the presentation
  
  
• personal inventory slide to summarize your personal inventory results from the self-assessment tools on the ALIS website and the ‚ÄúMy Personal Inventory‚Äù worksheet
  
  
• three occupational profiles slides to profile three careers that interest you
  
  
• connections slide to make connections from your personal inventory to your career choices; this slide will address why you are interested in or suited to these careers
  
  
• reflections slide to communicate what you see as the positive and negative aspects of the job
  
  
• reference slide to cite your source(s)
  
  
• closing slide to tie up your presentation

Step 3: Save the presentation, naming the file “career,” in your INF1070 folder.

 

 

Checkpoint

 

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Can I identify and navigate the PowerPoint 2007 screen and access commands in the Ribbon and the Office button?

• Was I able to create, enter data into, and save a new PowerPoint presentation to document my findings from my career research?

Once you are finished Time to Practise 1 and have saved your work, talk with your teacher regarding assessment.

 

Use the Software Skills Checklist, available in the Toolkit, to check off the skills you have learned in this training room and that you are confident in demonstrating. Remember to save the Checklist to your computer so that you can keep it up-to-date.

 

If needed, revisit Training Room 1 to review any of the skills in which you had difficulties. If you are comfortable demonstrating the skills presented in this training room, continue to Training Room 2.

 

INF1070 Learn EveryWare © 2009 Alberta Education