PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

PowerPoint Animation: Alarm Clock

This sample presentation includes 3 animated clocks that are equipped with old-fashioned alarm bells that ring after either 1, 2, or 5 minutes – depending upon the clock you choose! Use these in a quiz session, a quick break, or adapt them to run a longer time and use for an assignment time – or even a lunch or tea break! These clocks have been created using basic PowerPoint shapes and are made Theme aware so that when you copy them to your presentation, they appear in harmony with the overall appearance of your slide content.

Download and use these clocks in your presentation.

Filed Under: Presentation Bank
Tagged as: Animation, Graphics, PowerPoint, Presentation Samples

Zenler Studio: Conversation with Tom Burton

Tom Burton is VP Business Development at Zenler. Tom is responsible for developing North American markets for Zenler’s eLearning authoring tools as well as Learning Management Systems. Tom also chips in as one of Zenler’s community managers. Tom has extensive sales background and eLearning is his big area of interest and he blogs often on e-Learning. Zenler’s products include Zenler Studio eLearning Authoring Tool and Zenler Online Learning Management System.

In this conversation, Tom discusses how existing PowerPoint users can use Zenler Studio, and about delivering the created content through devices such as the iPad.

Geetesh: What exactly is Zenler Studio, and what makes Zenler Studio attractive to PowerPoint users?

Tom: Zenler Studio is a new eLearning authoring tool that lets users easily create rich interactive eLearning courses. Traditionally PowerPoint based authoring tools were more of just a PowerPoint to Flash Conversion tool, but with Zenler Studio, its much more than that with its Course Designer which gives the course a proper structure and other interactive features. Zenler Studio treats a course just like a book having chapters and questions at end of each chapter.

With Zenler Studio, you can create courses with Multiple Quiz Styles, Multiple format import including Word as embedded eBook & PowerPoint, Video/Audio Narration, Screen capture videos, a range of customisable interactions all from right within PowerPoint and all within a single tool.

Currently in the authoring tools available, you would create a flash quiz and embed it into the course. But this approach causes limitations on the extent to which these quizzes can be customised. We take a radical approach in Zenler Studio, the quizzes are inserted as pure slides into PowerPoint.

That is — even the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers are nothing but just slides in PowerPoint. This gives users the ability to customise each quiz slides to great lengths than they were able to do before.

Also another key differentiator is that it also lets users create simulations and scenarios using it’s Scenario Builder feature. Moreover, with Zenler Studio pro+ users which is coming up. users can also can create fully integrated end-to-end simulation/game based courses from an authoring tool now without the huge costs involved in custom game development.

Take a look at the quick demo to see to create a course using Zenler Studio.

Geetesh: Once you create content with Zenler Studio within the familiar PowerPoint environment, what output options are available? Also is the ouput iPad compatible?

Tom: Zenler Studio allows users to publish courses in SCORM/AICC format and Adobe Flash currently. With almost all mobile OSs dropping support for Flash and eLearning going more mobile, we believe HTML5 is the future. HTML5 is still very much an evolving standard, but let me take this opportunity to announce that Zenler Studio with HTML5/Mobile compatibility should be out soon as it’s in final stages of development.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: eLearning, Interviews, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: AutoRecover and AutoSave Options

Has this ever happened to you: you have been working on a presentation for hours and suddenly PowerPoint or even the computer crashes? This may happen due to a power outage, instability of the system, or even PowerPoint itself may crash. You realize that you had not saved the presentation for a long time and you may have lost most of your work! Although you can keep your programs updated, system secure, and even save your file often, these steps provide no guarantee that you will never see a crash again and lose all or some of your work. Fortunately, you can salvage most f your work if PowerPoint closes abnormally by enabling AutoRecover and AutoSave options. These options can be life savers as they help you prevent losing your precious work in two ways.

Learn how to enable AutoRecover and AutoSave options in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2010, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2008 for Mac: Theme Fonts

Each Theme contains several unique facets such as Theme Fonts, Theme Colors, and Theme Effects that set each Theme apart from other Themes. Note that all the slides differ in terms of colors, fonts, and effects applied. Yet the text content is still the same. When a different Theme is applied to your PowerPoint presentation, the fonts, colors, and effects applied to your slides change. Unless you override this on a per slide basis, these changes show up in all slides in the presentation. The resulting slides all look consistent.

Explore how you can change the active Theme Fonts set in PowerPoint 2008 for Mac.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2008
Tagged as: Fonts, Office for Mac, PowerPoint 2008, Themes, Tutorials

Outstanding Presentations Workshop 2012: Conversation with Ellen Finkelstein

Ellen Finkelstein is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP and author of several PowerPoint, Flash, and AutoCAD books — she just announced the third series of her Outstanding Presentations Workshop, a webinar series that allows everyone to learn from renowned presentation experts.

In this conversation, Ellen talks more about this new webinar series.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Ellen Finkelstein, Interviews, PowerPoint, Presentation Skills, Training