1. Training Room 1

Information Processing 1070

Project 3: Digital Presentation Skills

 

Training Room 1: Creating a PowerPoint 2007® Presentation

 

A photograph shows a teacher interacting with students as they are working on computers.

© Monkey Business Images/shutterstock

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’ll 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’s 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.
    – 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—too 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.

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.