Building new presentations is faster than fixing textbook slides

Eventually everyone will know and use the techniques shown here. Until then I will have to fix files that come with textbooks.


For far too long I tried to fix textbook slides by removing extraneous stuff like headers and footers, changing the background to a solid color, removing bullets, turning the title into complete sentence, and adding a graphic to illustrate the concept in the title.


This seems to take much more work and time than the way I do it now mainly because of the way publishers create the slides. Often even if I change the slide master I still have to work with each slide to fix certain elements.


Now I start with a template, save the file as a new presentation and then copy any useful graphics to slides. Then I build the other slides adding a title and graphic to each.


The template has all the few things I need: a solid background, no header or footer, and fonts the right size so everyone can read the titles no matter where they are in the room.


Sometimes I copy the bullets and change them into sentences to add to the speaker notes, but it is often faster to add my thoughts than to work with the bullets.


I work with the textbook to cover the most important concepts in the chapter and try to use different language than that in the book. Hopefully the students will better learn the material if they can see it presented in more than one way.




Thoughts?


John

PowerPoints Posted @ Innovations 2010

If you click the title of this post you will go to the innovations site and can see all the PowerPoint files for the presentations this year.

It is a snapshot of where we are this year not only in how we use PowerPoint but also what teachers are interested in.


Check it out!

Thoughts?


 John

Getting text into speaker notes

Now we know not to put much text on a slide--just one complete sentence (if you have any text on it at all) and the sentence should be short.

But we need to get text into the speaker notes so what is the best way to do that?

You can type it in.

You can use the student solution: copy and paste.

You can talk and let the computer type it in for you. If you have Windows Vista or 7 then it comes with a very good speech recognition program. It is superb at allowing you to control your computer and pretty good at entering text. And it gets better the more training you do.

You have to teach the program to understand the way you talk. And you have to learn how to use the program.

Even better than Windows speech recognition is Dragon Naturally Speaking. Clicking the title of this post will take you to the New York Times review by David Pogue.

Dragon is not free (the price has fallen since it came out) but there is an academic discount for teachers and students. It is much better at entering text. And you still have to learn it and teach it your voice.

However you enter your speaker notes, ideally you will enter your thoughts  and not just what the textbook says. This will give students a second way of looking at the material.

Thoughts?

John

@ Innovations 2010

My thanks to those who rose early to see the presentation yesterday and my apologies to those who could not get in to see it. I wish I had thought to leave my business cards outside the room so those who were turned away could have got to my web site and the links to this blog and the file for the PowerPoint. Next time I will know better.

I did give the file to the conference and eventually you will be able to download the file through the web site for the conference. You can get to the web site by clicking the title of this post.

I knew the room was too small but decided to not ask for a bigger one since I could not be sure that it would fill up. Even though every time I give this at a conference the room fills up. I should have asked for a bigger room. But when I thought about going to do this it seems so presumptuous.

Someone asked about the animation of the titles on my slides and when I polled the audience there were others who agreed that it was annoying. The truth is that everything you put on a slide should be there for a reason and that includes animation. I revised the slides to make the words appear faster. But I am considering removing the animation from most of the titles.  Like Horatio, my philosophy needs expanding.

The name of the file on my home page is e6.pptx but if the number really reflected the number of times that I have changed it, then it would be 506. And still there is much room for improvement in it.

An opera singer once gave many encores at a concert and finally one of the audience yelled out that he had to keep it up until he got it right. I too will have to keep giving it and modifying it until I get it right.

Thoughts?

John

Slideshare.net chooses the best presentations

Slideshare.net (click the title of this post to go there) picks the best presentations every year and the link will take you to the winners for 2009.

This is also a place where you can go to post your own presentation or just look at what others have done.

Go here to see what slideshare.net says about themselves.

Explore the site. I am sure you will enjoy it.

When Office acts up

I gave the EYKAPIW presentation yesterday and imagine my grief when I could not import my outline file from Word into my template. I had tried it the night before and it worked great. But it balked during the show.

Today I ran the Microsoft Office Diagnostics and it found and repaired whatever was wrong and now it works again.

You can find this useful tool in the start menu in the Microsoft Office folder and then in a sub-folder called  Microsoft Office Tools. Or just start typing diag in the search window of the start menu.

The title of this post will take you to a page where you can read more about this useful feature.

Maybe I will run it before I give the EYKAPIW presentation again.

Slide master: secret of templates

Templates are the secret of PowerPoint to save time and make great presentations and the secret of templates is to know how to modify slide masters.


A slide master allows you to personalize the master and then all the customization will apply to all slides that use the master. 


Later if you want to make a change you can make it to the slide master and all slides will get the change.  


So you want to open your template and make changes to the slide master(s) and then when you finish, save the file as a template using the file extension .potx.


Then you can open the template and save it as a presentation and then add your content.


You get to slide master by choosing the View tab and choosing Slide Master. Once you open this view it will look like the image below.

Click the image to enlarge.




Microsoft has some training on slide masters here.


They also have an article Create and customize a slide master and another on Apply multiple slide masters to a new or existing presentation. And you can click the title of this post to go to learn more about slide masters.


Thoughts?


John

Templates: the secret of PowerPoint

When you open PowerPoint you are staring at a blank title slide.

Your next step should be to open the template that you carefully created and then import the outline you made in Word. Then you add the title slide and starting adding graphics to the slides and text to the speaker notes.

But first you have to build your template.

Or you could use mine or just look at mine and then build yours.

What you want to do with your template is set everything the way you want it and then save it as a template. Notice where PowerPoint saves it as it may surprise you.

Then the next time you have to create a new presentation you won't be staring at a blank title slide. You will be smiling at your template. Crafted with care.

And click the title of this post to learn more.

Thoughts?

All good things...

John

Use Word to create your PowerPoint

Yes you can save time by opening Word to create your next PowerPoint presentation. Open Word, go to the View tab and then select Outline as shown in the image below (click the image to enlarge it).

 

In the outline view you just type the sentence for each slide and then hit return. Although you can also create bullets in the outline mode we won't, right?

Using the Outline mode allows you to view the entire presentation from a bird's eye view. It is also much faster than trying to enter the headline text in PowerPoint's normal view. And you can use the grammar checker in Word.

Yes you can use the outline view in PowerPoint, too. But I think Word works better and gives you a better perspective.

Once you are finished with the Word document you save it and then open Powerpoint, click on new slide, then slip down to choose the option "slides from outline" (see the image below and click to enlarge).

Slides from outline allows you to import an outline created in Word and PowerPoint will create a new slide for each line in the outline.

Click the title of this post to go elsewhere for more information.

Thoughts?

John

Seven keyboard shortcuts to use during a presentation

Ever see a presenter who didn't know how to put PowerPoint into presentation mode? Or advance to the next slide or go back a slide?

Painful isn't it?

So let's not let that happen to you.

1. F5 will put Powerpoint into presentation or slide show mode.

Before you push F5 make sure you have set up the presenter view by going to the slide show tab and choosing the right options.

2. During the show you can advance to the next slide or animation using:

N, ENTER, PAGE DOWN, RIGHT ARROW, DOWN ARROW, or SPACEBAR

3. Go to any slide: (slide) number + ENTER
For example if you want to go to slide 24 you enter 24 and ENTER.

To know which slide to go to hold down the Ctrl key and then touch S. That will show every slide and its number.

4. Return to the previous slide: Touch the Backspace key

5. Display a blank black slide, or return to the presentation from a blank black slide.

Touch the B or PERIOD key.

Display a blank white slide, or return to the presentation from a blank white slide.

W or COMMA

6. Display the shortcut menu. Hold down the SHIFT key and then touch F10

7. End a presentation. Touch the ESC or HYPHEN key.

If you are unsure that you will remember them you can make a note card with them. But the best way is to learn them by using them every time you make a presentation. You can still keep the note card handy anyway.

Knowing these seven shortcuts will help build your confidence just when you need it most.

John

How to pronounce EYKAPIW

You pronounce EYKAPIW "eek." Like "Eek!!! Look at all those bullets!"

The letters yapiw are silent.

John

Finding images on the Web

First you should try to find images inside PowerPoint. These are often of good quality and have no copyright.

Go to the insert tab, and choose clip art. Then unselect all items except Photographs.

By limiting your media to photos you will avoid cluttering the options with useless clip art or other items.

Sometimes you can't find what you need inside PowerPoint. So it is time to turn to the Web.

You don't want to use any images that have a copyright without contacting the owner and asking permission.

I must say here that I prefer ixquick as a search engine when just searching for text content.

Many people prefer Google as a search engine, although any search engine can limit returns to images. And it does not pay to be loyal when you are simply trying to find a suitable image. Open several tabs and use multiple search engines at the same time.

Here is what Google results look like:

Notice that you have 18 photos here and to see more you must go to the next page. 

Google did recently add some settings and to get to them click the Show Options at the top left of the screen. Then you will see the options on the left side of the screen as shown below.

By clicking Medium or Large you will get a different subset of pictures.

When you find one you want click on the image and then click "See full size image" and then see if you can copy it to your PowerPoint slide.

Here is what Bing looks like when you do the same search:

Notice on the left you can expand Size, Layout, Color, and Style and look carefully at the scroll bar on the right side of the screen.  You have many more images to look at without having to go to another page.

In the image below I expanded some of these settings to show you the options available:

Again you can change the images shown by clicking Wide or Square or whatever. I prefer wide large images for PowerPoint slides.

The settings at the top right of the screen allow you to show more or less info about each image or to increase or decrease the number of images shown by making them smaller or larger.

And if you click on one of the images you will go to that page (but remain inside the search!) and then you can click Full Size which will open the image in a new page where you can right click the image and copy it.

So I usually turn to Bing first, but won't hesitate to use Google, Ixquick or other search engines to find the right image.

Remember that you can search on any term...it could be a concept as well as a person, place or thing...I found a photo of 2 monkeys with their tails curved into question marks by searching on question mark. I also found 2 swans with necks forming question marks.

So do a quick search for an image and compare Google and Bing and see what you think. And share your observations here.

John

Protect yourself from poorly presented (or crafted) presentations

I don't know why, but suddenly I am thinking of ways to protect myself when I must sit through a poorly crafted presentation.

They mean well and may not know better.

Presenters who stuff the screen with bullets that they insist on reading to you.

Or not only is the screen filled with bullets but there is a logo, a date, a slide number, and an image that may or may not have anything to do with the bullets.

Or the slide may be black text on a white background and the lighting in the room makes it painful to look at.

We see everything in infinite detail and our brain will note the slide number, date, clip art, slide design and everything on each slide even if we try only to focus on what is important. This is tiresome.

For a long time I did not know why I hated sitting through some presentations.

The more I learned the more I understood.

Do not believe that we can multi-task when it comes to intellectual activities. You may be able to wash the clothes and read a book, but you can't read a book and watch TV at the same time. Or text and drive a car. Our brains do best when they do one thing at a time.

A slide with bullets begs me to read them, so I do. As I begin to process what I read the presenter is reading the bullets interfering with what I am doing.

So what to do?

First try to focus on the presenter and ignore the screen.  If this is not possible due to the layout of the room, then focus anywhere but on the screen.

This limits input to the presenter's voice. You merely have to listen and process what is said. But you won't confuse your brain with reading and listening at the same time.

Be prepared.  You may not like what you hear. When a presenter reads bullets often they are short phrases, not complete sentences and sometimes they don't make any sense. You have to hope that the presenter, having read the bullet realizes this and expands to explain what they mean. The next time you try this technique you may see exactly what I mean.

May you rarely have to use these techniques.

John

Beyond bullet points

Cliff Atkinson and his books on PowerPoint are very useful and I encourage everyone to visit his new website. Be sure to visit the section on resources. I checked both of his books out of the library, several times and usually check them out before I give my presentation so I can show the audience.

When his second book came out in 2007 it was voted one of the 10 best books of that year.

I also posted a copy of my presentation to his forums and he shared some slides that I still use in the presentation.

Thank you Cliff!

Using the presenter view

PowerPoint has a very nice feature that allows you to see your presentation (and speaker notes) on your monitor while the audience only sees the slides.

To use this feature your computer has to connect to at least two monitors or a monitor and a projector.

Clicking the title above will take you to a Microsoft page to show you how to do this. Where I work, I must take my laptop to class since the computers in the classroom don't know that there is a projector in the room.

I connect my laptop to the VGA connector and a sound cable to the sound input and then I can use the presenter view.

Having the speaker notes available helps me since each slide has minimum text on it.

While using the presenter view you also have complete control of your computer so you can get to other files or programs without disrupting the show.

Notice that there is a timer to show you how long you have been talking and a clock that shows the current time.

You can adjuct the font size of the speaker notes by clicking the + or - icons to the right of the word Zoom.


It is worth the pain of lugging your notebook to enjoy this feature.  Also you know your notebook. You may be surprised if you try to show your presentation on unfamiliar hardware.

John

Everything you know about PowerPoint is Wrong

Many people use PowerPoint and many others suffer when they have to sit through the presentations.

This is because many learned how to use PowerPoint before there was some research to show how we should use it.

Many people use slides with bullets and they usually read them to the audience.
Although the audience has already read the bullets before the speaker can read them out loud.

PowerPoint presentations usually aim at informing (and may not care if the audience understands what they see) or guiding learning (and then we very much do care if the audience does understand).

As a teacher I am most often concerned about crafting presentations to guide learning.

I have a copy of my presentation here.


Why not download it and view the speaker notes below each slide?