CITES Presentation Tips & Help
PowerPoint Uses
PowerPoint Tutorial Sites
Developing Content
Presentation Reminders
Additional Resources & FAQs
PowerPoint Uses
PowerPoint (PPT) was initially designed primarily as a presentation program using a series of sequential individual frame or "slide" images to visually project pictures, text points, and graphic data representations, PPT is now also widely used to design other materials for printing, such as posters, certificates, notices of events, invitations, signs and flyers. PPT also continues to be used to design slides for use with older technologies, such as 35 mm slide projectors (see Using PowerPoint for 35mm Slides).
PowerPoint Tutorial Sites
The websites listed here are good resources. Some sites provide better descriptions of specific topics than others. For others you may need to scroll to reach the section where a tutorial begins.
http://www.ensc.sfu.ca/grad/theses/tips/Effective_presentation.PowerPoint
Victor Chen at Iowa State has produced an excellent introduction to PowerPoint presentations with his Designing Effective PowerPoint Presentations. Chen’s examples show you good and bad (so you will know what to avoid) ways to use color, type and graphics. Highly recommended.
http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/technology/tutorials/start/PowerPoint/index.html
Covers a wide range of topics, including: Starting PowerPoint; Toolbars; Editing and formatting; Inserting clipart and objects; Slide setups and printing.
http://www.soe.uoguelph.ca/webfiles/agalvez/poster/
From the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario contains an excellent outline of six steps to developing effective posters.
http://www.tekxam.com/StudyGuide/presentations/presentations_overview.html
The site requires quite a bit of scrolling to find relevant topics. Note the arrows in the upper right and left corners of the screen that help you move to the next topic or back to the previous screen. If you hover your cursor over Presentations on the top navigation bar, a menu of topics will appear. Among topics covered in this tutorial: Adding slides; Creating charts; Creating tables; Adding graphics; Slide transition and animation; Training exercises.
- Keep words for each slide to a minimum.
- Use the Notes Page instead of slides to create your text. [View > Notes Page]
- Select key words for your slide
- Design slides so they enhance rather than duplicate what you say. Remember: If a slide does not enhance what you say, chances are you do not need it.
- Avoid lengthy bulleted text segments all on one slide. Use continuation slides if you have a long list of necessary bullet points.
- Develop content according to the needs of your audience.
- Use text slides to introduce new terms and definitions.
- Use graphic slides to:
- show relationships (Example: Bar graph)
- show relationships of parts to a whole (Example: Pie chart)
- show trends (Example: Line graph)
- depict concepts (Example: Model)
- reveal objects unfamiliar to your audience (Example: Photograph)
Keep in mind that:
- Tables tend to provide more numbers than a viewer can process and remember.
- Line graphs, pie charts, bar graphs and other graphs help your viewer visually process numerical data.
Photographs and complex images may slow down older computers, creating a lag time during your presentation. To prevent this lag, click through your slides on the computer to be used prior to your presentation.
Use the keyboard’s "B" key if you must walk between the projector and the screen. This will eliminate glare from the projector and distraction from the projected image by turning your screen to black. When you are ready to return to the same slide, click the "B" key again to restore the screen.
You can click the keyboard’s space bar, "N" key or down arrow as an alternative to mouse use when moving to your next slide.
http://pptfaq.com/index.html/ provides answers to frequently asked questions and has a search engine too. You will also find links to topics like these: Tutorials; Working with Graphs and Charts; Making PDFs from PowerPoint; PowerPoint Help; Importing Content; Exporting Content; Printing from PowerPoint; Taking it to the Web.
http://www.microsoft.com has an abundance of information you can use for PowerPoint and other Microsoft programs. Because of the ABUNDANT amount of information on the first page, you may wish to e-mail your Microsoft-related question to: mshelp@microsoft.com.
http://office.microsoft.com/powerpoint provides tips, instructions and shortcuts to help you work smarter plus templates (for PowerPoint and other purposes) and other items that may assist you.
If you need more in-depth assistance with content development,
CITES invites you to contact one of the following members of the CITES Instructional Development Team:
Robert Gringle, Instructional Development Coordinator ~ rgringle@email.unc.edu
Lee Smith, Educational Media Specialist ~ smithl@email.unc.edu
Helen Hall, Graphic Designer ~ hallh@email.unc.edu