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Exercises for Introduction to PowerPoint

Exercise 1 - Create a Basic Presentation

Using what you know so far, create a basic, bare bones presentation and preview it.

You can make up a presentation entirely of your own or follow the these directions to create a simple, 5-slide show:

1. Create a new presentation:
   1. From the menu bar, choose "File"
   2. From the file menu, choose "New"or "New Presentation"
   3. Choose a slide layout (if necessary - Mac OS) or a design template (Windows)
   4. Click the "OK" button
2. Make a title slide with the title "Enhancing Presentations with PowerPoint" and your name
3. Create a bullet list slide with title "Use a Slide to:" and these bullet points:
   • Clarify a point
   • Emphasize a point
   • Add variety
   • List the main points
4. Create a bullet list slide with the title "Avoid Using a Slide When:" and these bullet points:
   • It distracts from the focus
   • It is irrelevant (though interesting)
   • It does not fit the audience
   • It is a time filler
5. Create another bullet slide. The title should be "Visual Aids Help People Grasp More Information". Use these bullet points:
   • Visual aids increase retention of information as much as 5 times
   • People comprehend 87% of information delivered verbally and visually
6. Create a slide with a bulleted list. The title should read: "Visual Aids Help You Get Organized". Use these bullet points:
   • Visual aids force you to order and sequence information
   • Visual aids force you to summarize ideas
7. Reorganize your presentation so that the last two slides you created are the first two slides after the title slide
8. Save your presentation
9. Preview the presentation

Exercise 2 - Dress It Up!

Take the presentation you created in Exercise 1 and add to it the visual elements learned in the workshop section "Dressing It Up." These are: adding pictures (clip art or from files), moving and resizing boxes, adding tables and formatting text.

If you prefer, you can use the following directions to modify the presentation detailed in Exercise 1:

1. On the slide entitled: "Avoid Using A Slide When", resize the font to 32 points and change the font type to Arial
2. Resize the bullet list's box so that it takes up about the left half of the slide
3. Insert a clip art image to the right half of the slide - use something that conveys the idea of saving time. You may need to resize the image to fit
4. Create a slide entitled: "Visual Aids Increase Retention" with this table:
   

   Information Pathway	Percentage of Learning Received Through It
   Visual	75%
   Auditory	13%
   Smell, Taste, Touch	12%

   
   
5. If you have time, you can experiment with the tools on the "Tables and Borders" toolbar
6. Save your presentation
7. Preview the updated version

Exercise 3 - Consistency Tools

Take the exercise you did for the first two practice sessions and modify its look and feel.

1. Apply a design template (your choice) to the presentation
2. Flip through the slides to see how the template is applied to the different types of slides
3. Add footer information to your presentation:
   1. From the menu bar, choose "View"
   2. From the view menu, choose "Header and Footer..."
   3. Experiment with the options on the "Slide" tab
4. Save your work
5. Preview the presentation

Exercise 4 - Show on the Road

Take the presentation you did for previous exercises and prepare it for showing to an audience.

1. Add some transitions between slides and animation. (Have fun and play with lots of them now. When you do a presentation for real, you will want to limit the types of transitions or animations to one or two.)
2. If you want to experiment, choose to create a custom animation rather than one of the preset ones. You will have many more choices to make, but if you play around with items and click the "preview" button, you will see how this works
3. Save the presentation as a show
4. View the show
5. Open a presentation and view it. Compare the two ways of presenting your PowerPoint presentation to an audience - which do you prefer?