Making an Impression Understanding Presentation Software

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Example – column and picture Sub-title 1 Sub-title 2 Sub-title 3

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.

Ways to view your presentation There are three ways to view your presentation –Normal View –Slide Sorter View –Slide Show View

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.

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.

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.