Entries Tagged 'Microsoft' ↓

Here is my handout.  Some of it is covered in other places in this blog. I created it on a Macbook using Pages and exported it as a PDF.  Coolness.

Jumpdrive

Create a folder

PowerPoint Backgrounds and creating content in Word

Adding Sound to PowerPoint and making the music play across multiple slides

Creating Screenshots

Creating a group in Outlook Express

Locking your computer

Word Tips

FireFox

End of year grade export

maystaffdevtips.pdf

You can type the content for your PowerPoint presentation in Microsoft Word. If you highlight a section and choose Heading 1 in the formatting toolbar, that section of text can become a slide title. If you highlight another section and choose Heading 2 in the formatting toolbar, that text will become a bullet point. Header 3 will give you a bullet one level in. Normal text will not show up at all.

When you are finished typing your information, save your text in case you wish to edit or re-use later. Go to File/Send to (click the chevron arrows if necessary to see all the choices) and choose Microsoft PowerPoint.

You now have a basic presentation with all your text already in place. You can now add backgrounds, animations, slide transitions and whatever else you want to dress it up.

This technique makes it easy to see the flow of your presentation and to see where you might want to add notes if you are creating notes pages for yourself. You could type notes into Word as you work on your original text - just leave the notes as normal text. They won’t show on the presentation when you “send” it but once your Slide titles and bullets have been created in PowerPoint you can switch view to notes page and you can easily paste your notes onto the bottom section and you will have a complete presentation package complete with notes for you to use as you present.

If you’ve ever watched students work on a presentation you know that they tend to want to spend the bulk of their time working on the bling. By creating content in Word and then sending it to PowerPoint you know they are starting with the “cake” and then working on the “frosting”.

If you are ever asked to create a PowerPoint for someone else, you can tell them you would be glad to help and if they will type their information in Word and send it to you you will have it done very quickly for them.

1. You can put single words in separate text boxes and animate them
2. You can insert an autoshape and then have your text wrap within the shape
3. You can decide if the animation should start after the preceding action or wait for you to click a mouse or presenter, or set the timing
4. You can have more than one object animated on a slide
5. You can add shapes and pictures and move them on top of or under other items like a stack of pictures and words by arranging/send to back or bring to front
6. After you choose an animation you can click the effect tab and make the text change color, play a sound, appear a word or a letter at a time
7. the effects tab will also let you group to second level paragraphs to give you more control of how bulleted lists appear (called a build)
8. have a chart appear on the slide, one element at a time
9. add buttons or pictures that let you navigate around your slideshow. You decide what gets clicked and where it sends you
10. Draw comic book type illustrations using the lines in the autoshapes menu and fill shapes with gradients to give the illusion of shading

This was a good session that gave some basic common sense tips on using PowerPoint.

Why would we want to use it (well)?

• This generation has little tolerance for delays or mistakes in delivery of information

• It’s an easy way to get information across in a short time period

Caution:

• Too much information - on each slide
• Color choices (may depend on lighting in presentation location)
• Can be “eye catching or eye watering”
• Presentation often not test driven to catch problems

If well used can be extremely engaging

Tips:

• Proof read
• Don’t include all information
• Practice test run
• Don’t over-use the software in the classroom

Key - Keep the focus on the presenter

Start with the basics

• Know your information
• What are the key points or concepts
• Make an outline (enter basic information on blank slides)
• Order is important
• Add relevant materials (diagrams, images, audio, video)

Consider approaches for presenting

• How is the slide being used?
• Ask a question on the slide (stop for discussion)
• Break up with a related activity (stop presentation, do short activity, go back to presentation)

Adjust style elements (easy place to waste time)

• Visual interest is key but remember to keep focus on the presenter
• You can use WordArt to make notes on each slide to remind you of details, changes, and additions - what needs to be done to each slide
• Do test run
• Prepare your oral presentation (this is the part that many people omit!)
• To prepare you can take your original outline and print it out or print slide handouts.
• 3 slides to a page and you can have lines on the right side for notes

Presentations without a presenter

• Podcast presentation
• Save each slide as a jpeg
• Insert into MovieMaker
• Create audio voiceover using Audacity put together audio and movie - Podcast

*They did a Distance Learning Day at Good Shepherd. They submitted lesson plans, students stayed home and did assignments via internet. This type of podcast presentation was part of her lesson.

Cross-posted at Thoughts Have Wings.

I love Amazon’s used books. I got a box of paperbacks for Dale today. He has decided he wants to go back and start reading all of Sue Grafton’s books in order. He has read A through F and I got an entire box in the mail today - G through N. For those of you who do not read mysteries Sue Grafton’s books have titles like “M is for Murder” and “I is for Innocence”. The main character is a girl private detective named Kinsey Milhone. These books should last him through the transplant process.

I got a copy of PowerPoint For Teachers by Ellen Finkelstein and Pavel Samsonov which looks pretty good. It walks you through creation of presentations to use in the classroom and I hope to learn some new techniques that I can post here. I am making a little collection of things to read and learn and blog about during Dale’s hospitalization and this will be part of that.

Part of my job is supporting teachers in their use of technology and I forget sometimes that while I get excited about Web 2.0 tools and blogging and wikis and skype, I forget that most people just want to know little tricks that make their job easier. Today I showed one person keyboard shortcuts - Windows/E for opening Windows Explorer and Windows/L for locking their computer and being able to log back in and have all their programs still open. Another person just wanted the steps for creating a folder on their desktop and instructions on how to save documents directly to it. Two people were made happy by something that took me just a few moments.

To make a new folder by the way - you right click on a blank space whether it be on your desktop or within another folder. Choose new and then choose folder. Rename your folder and then when you create a document you want to save in that folder click on File/Save As and using the drop down box navigate to the folder you just created. Voila!

I also learned you can link text boxes in Word. A class project entails some students creating a magazine type article that I mentioned in the previous post. While the Word column function doesn’t do exactly what they need another way to go is putting everything in text boxes and then “linking” them so that text will flow from one to the next if there is more text that will fit in the box.

1. Hover the mouse pointer over the border of the first text box. The pointer shape changes to the Move shape (looks like a plus sign with arrows at the ends of the lines)

2. Right click and choose Create Text Box Link

3. The mouse pointer will change to a “pitcher” shape.

4. Click in the box you wish to link to - the text will now “pour” from the first text box into the second.

5. You can link more than one text box but you must always link forward - you cannot link backwards.

This is still not an ideal answer but it gives you a some control and another option.

I love technology but I like making people happy too! New books, happy people - it was a good day!

Most of us use Outlook Express every day of our lives but most of us don’t let it work for us. We get frustrated when we can’t find an email and we miss important information because we just don’t have time to go through all the stuff that finds it’s way into our inbox.

This series is going to help identify the tools that will make your email life easier. If you find this useful please leave me a note in the comments section.

One of the first things that is helpful and simple but many of us don’t notice is the search box. YES! You can search your email just like you search the internet! Are you looking for that email that tells you how to export grades? Try typing gradebook into the searchbox.

Begin by clicking the Find icon

Before you go any further look at this menu. It gives you a list of ways to search and keyboard shortcuts to search quicker. Experiment with these different searches and if you find that you use one way all the time write the keyboard shortcut on a stickie and put it on the side of your monitor until you have used it enough to remember!

We see we can narrow down our search to a particular message, a folder if we have created one (which we will learn to do later in this series), we can find people, or we can keep telling Outlook Express to find the next instance of our search keyword.

After we click find we see a new menu with even more ways to make our email work for us.

Let’s look at some ways you can search. You can tell it to look in a specific folder in your email. You can specify a date range. You can tell Outlook Express to search for a keyword in the text of the messages or search for a message that has an attachment.
You can search for an email from a person. You can search for an email by who it was sent TO. Huh??

What if Joe Smith emails you and says he lost a piece of information you sent him last week and could you resend it? The messages you send have a copy stored in a folder called Sent! You can search that folder for the email you sent Joe Smith and quickly resend the message. Just click Browse to change the folder to Sent and then put the name in the To box. Click Find Now. You can now select the message or messages and you can use the menu items at the top (File, Edit,View, Message) to work with them. You can go to edit and click select all, go to Edit again and click Move to Folder (if you have a folder created) or delete messages - you could delete the whole group!

This is just one way to search you messages. Here is another.

You can sort your messages in ascending or descending order on different columns! If you have a lot of messages in your Inbox and want to find the messages from me you can click on From and it will sort your email in alphabetical order on the From column. You can always click the Received column to sort it back the way it was.

Next time we will learn how to create and work with folders!

PowerPoint templates are fun but most of us and especially our students like to use pictures they find on their own for backgrounds. Remember - you must save the picture not just copy and paste. Remember where you saved it! The way to do this is to click the Format menu and choose Background. Click the Background Fill drop-down list and choose Fill Effects. Select the Picture tab. Next click the Select Picture button and navigate to the location where your images are stored. Select the image you want to use and click OK to choose the image. The Background dialog box appears again to confirm your choice. Click the Apply button to add the image to the slide.