PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Video Shape

When you insert a video clip within a PowerPoint slide, you’ll find it placed as a traditional rectangular shape. And while that’s exactly what most users expect, it does seem safe and conventional. However, PowerPoint 2010 does allow you to have your video playing in different shapes such as a circle or oval, or a wave, a triangle, or any of the shapes that PowerPoint includes. Just the fact that a video can be placed within a shape is no reason to forego the conventional rectangle — do remember that most other shapes may crop out important parts of your video clips.

Learn how add shapes for videos in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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

YouTube Video Wizard: The Indezine Review

YouTube Video Wizard is a PowerPoint add-in that enables you to insert YouTube videos into a PowerPoint slide using just the YouTube video URL that appears in the browser address bar. This is much easier than following the official Microsoft process of inserting online videos — and Microsoft’s suggested option only works in PowerPoint 2010 or later. YouTube Video Wizard, on the other hand, works in almost all Windows versions of PowerPoint. YouTube Video Wizard is from Shyam Pillai, a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP who creates several PowerPoint add-ins.

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Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: Add-in, PowerPoint, Review, Shyam Pillai, YouTube

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Texture Fills for Slide Backgrounds

When you want to change the default look of your slide background, you can explore the various slide background styles available in PowerPoint. Other than these styles, you can certainly explore specific options that we have already covered: solid, gradient, or picture fills for slide backgrounds. In addition, you can also choose a texture fill for your slide background. Texture and picture fills for slide backgrounds have so much in common; the same picture can be used for both a texture or a picture fill — the main difference is that while a picture background results in your slide using a single picture as a backdrop, using a texture background can result in the same picture being tiled across the slide background — imagine a wallpaper on your room’s wall with repeating motifs. Also some pictures lend themselves better to being used as textures, especially if they are seamless.

Learn how to apply texture fills as a slide background in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2011
Tagged as: Background, Office for Mac, PowerPoint 2011, Tutorials

Articulate Storyline: Conversation with Tom Kuhlmann

      Tom Kuhlmann is VP, Community for Articulate, where he manages the Articulate user community. He also writes the Rapid E-learning Blog which is published weekly to over 95,000 readers. Tom has developed and managed e-learning courses for both large and small organizations. He’s passionate about learning technology and his core focus is on helping people succeed and grow. He is known throughout the industry for his practical, no-nonsense approaches to e-learning. He’s also a frequent speaker at ASTD and e-learning industry events. He has a Master’s in Education Technology from Pepperdine.

In this conversation, Tom discusses the new Articulate Storyline product.

Geetesh: What exactly does Storyline do, and what motivated Articulate to create Storyline?

Tom: Articulate Storyline is the authoring solution for those who build e-learning courses. You can create traditional e-learning & multimedia presentations as well as screencasts and software simulations.

In the past, creating rapid e-learning courses meant you needed an assortment of applications. Storyline removes this need because it’s a more complete authoring solution that includes screencast videos, interactive simulations, and the ability to do more complex type learning interactions with variables. For those who work on small teams or by themselves and have a limited budget, Articulate Storyline’s a great product because it doesn’t require using multiple tools and it includes over 40 built-in characters and photos. This saves a lot of time and money.

The courses can be published in Flash, HTML5, and for the iPad. That means you can build traditional e-learning, mobile learning, and even mobile presentations. I really love the iPad output. It’s very Flash-like and just looks cool. It’s fun to build a quick demo and show my friends what it looks like on the iPad.

In general, software applications are becoming more powerful and user expectations are becoming more sophisticated. The goal is always to make the software applications easier to use and add more capability. With rapid e-learning, much of the focus has been on PowerPoint-to-Flash conversions like Articulate Presenter. This is an excellent way to create e-learning, especially for those who know PowerPoint and don’t know Flash. And PowerPoint’s authoring capabilities are more sophisticated than most probably realize.

The challenge with the PowerPoint-to-Flash publishing is crafting more complex learning. You give up a lot of programming control with PowerPoint so that means you don’t get even simple interactive elements like drag and drop, rollovers, and variables.

We have a generation of rapid e-learning developers who got their start in PowerPoint-to-Flash and now are ready to do more. The trick is building an application that is both easy to use and allows for more complexity. With Articulate Storyline you get that.

Geetesh: Can a newbie really create e-learning content using Articulate Storyline? Also will PowerPoint users be at ease, or will they need to unlearn some concepts?

Tom: Yes, what I find exciting about Articulate Storyline is that it’s a tool that can grow with you. If you’re a newbie, using Storyline is going to be almost as easy as using PowerPoint. That means you can jump right in and start creating courses, albeit simple courses.

Eventually, your skills and expectations mature, and you’ll want to do more than basic e-learning. In that case, Articulate Storyline grows with you. The first course you build probably won’t require variables. But eventually, you’ll want to do more sophisticated e-learning. With Storyline you won’t need to change tools.

The challenge with some e-learning applications is that even if you want to build simple courses, you still have to learn a lot about all of the tool’s features; thus, using the tool is not easy at the onset and not necessarily intuitive. That’s not the case with Articulate Storyline. The user interface has a very familiar feel. If you know your way around PowerPoint, then you’ll feel at home in Articulate Storyline. This makes learning to build courses easier and much faster. You’ll feel confident building that first course.

Another important feature for those transitioning from PowerPoint is that importing PowerPoint content into Storyline is really easy. And what you import can be edited in Storyline. So that means shapes remain shapes, the text is editable, and any images or master files come in as well.

Geetesh: What about publishing to an iPad-friendly format? Will a Storyline user need anything other than Storyline itself?

Tom: That’s a good question. The iPad has taken the world by storm so there’s a lot of emphasis on getting content onto the iPad. With Articulate Storyline it’s really easy.

Articulate Storyline offers two options. The first is that you can publish to HTML5, and then view what you publish via the iPad’s browser. As it is right now, HTML5 presents some challenges because each browser offers different capabilities. This is especially true with mobile Safari on the iPad. To provide the best user experience, we offer a free Articulate Mobile Player via the iTunes app store. The advantage of the Mobile Player is that what you create in Storyline is going to work the way you want it. You’re not going to be constrained by HTML5 and some of the current issues.

Another benefit of the Mobile Player is that you can allow the person to download the content onto the iPad. This means they can view it when they’re not online. That’s not an option if you run it over a network via HTML5.

Obviously, I manage the Articulate community, but from the perspective of an e-learning enthusiast, I am very pleased with Articulate Storyline. Articulate’s delivered a product that works both for beginners and experts. If you’re just getting started, you have a tool that will grow with you. And if you’re a seasoned rapid e-learning pro, Storyline offers a lot more capability than PowerPoint-to-Flash, but with a lot of PowerPoint comfort.

If you want to learn more about how easy it is to use, check out some of the Getting Started tutorials. Or better yet, try the free 30-day download.

You May Also Like: Articulate, PowerPoint, and E-Learning: Conversation with Tom Kuhlmann | Articulate Presenter ’09: Conversation with Mark Schwartz

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Articulate, eLearning, Interviews, PowerPoint, Tom Kuhlmann

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Video Effects

In this series of video tutorials, we have already covered how to apply Corrections, Recolor, Video Styles, and Video Borders to your inserted videos to enhance their appearance. However, you are certainly not limited to the options mentioned above — PowerPoint 2010 does seem to spoil you as far as choices about working with video files are concerned — so you can now apply Video Effects! Video Effects let you apply various effects such as shadows, glows, bevels, 3-D rotation, etc. to the selected video.

Learn about applying Video Effects in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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