You have spent a great deal of time reading and planning ideas for integrating your unit plan with information technology. This has been your major project for this course. Use the presentation skills you learn below to create a presentation about this project-based learning activity of yours, your unit plan. This web page provides four major areas of information:

1. concepts in how to present;
2. training on how to use Powerpoint, including how to insert video and other media elements such as still images;
3. assignment details for Powerpoint slideshows;
4. web option details for putting Powerpoint online.

Concepts for Presentation

Effective presentations involve more than nicely designed overheads or slides with relevant multimedia. You need evocative images and strong vocabulary that will assist your learners in recalling and reflecting on what you have said while you are speaking and long after the presentation is over. Remember that your slides contain an outline of talking points, not a narrative of everything you are going to say. Each slide serves as the basis for 2-5 minutes of talking by the presenter. Further note that your first image should be thought of as an important metaphor for the theme of your presentation. Further, think about how best to pass on these skills to those you will teach.

Readings from the Web's Hard Drives:

• Ten Commandments of Client Presentations (educators will need to think learner whenever this list says client)
• and more from The Strategic Communications Resource Library
• free presentation files and other free resources from Presenter's University
• Tips and tutorials from About.com, a very extensive collection of advice and resources for creating slides, transparencies, charts, and other types of presentations.

 
Readings from Library Shelves
 
• Milone, Michael N., Jr. (Feb., 1996). "Kids as Multimedia Authors" Technology & Learning. (v16n2) p22,24,27-28. ABSTRACT: Describes five existing classroom projects that use multimedia tools and computer technology to teach elementary and high school students multimedia authorship. Each project description discusses the type of computer software used and its uses to students. Projects teach students to incorporate video, audio, text, and graphics into student-produced multimedia presentations. [ERIC Database: EJ520172]

Ringle, William J. (1998). TechEdge: using computers to present and persuade. Boston : Allyn and Bacon. [journal available from UNCA Library: HF5718.22 .R56 1998]
Newstrom, John W & Edward E. Scannell (1998). The big book of presentation games : wake-em-up tricks, ice breakers & other fun stuff. New York : McGraw-Hill. [UNCA Library: HF5718.22 .N49 1998]
• Search online libraries, bookstores and periodical indexes with the term "presentations" to reach a steady stream of other other books and articles on this topic.


You will make hundreds of presentations over your career to all ages and sizes of groups. Often you will have an overhead projector for overheads or even computer-based projection systems for electronic slide shows. Assistance for this specialized form of composition is supported by many applications: Powerpoint, Clarisworks, Persuasion, Tempo and more. Tutorials are available below that will teach one of these cross-platform composition tools, Powerpoint. But creating slides is just a part of what you need to know. If you have not had prior presentation training, look more closely at the prior optional readings on how to make effective presentations.

Training for Powerpoint Use

To supplement the in-class training, you have some choices in your selection of online Powerpoint tutorials.
 
• Quick Tutorials:
• CAT Online tutorial video for Macintosh (Videoclip screen movie based). Scroll to the Powerpoint section and work the links from the top downward.
• UNC-Wilmington tutorial (text, picture based).

 
• Longer Tutorials: CAT Online tutorials text (Text based). Take the link to the Powerpoint information and work the links from the top downward.

 
• Extensive Tutorials: CBT - Computer Based Online Training (WIN password needed, animation graphic based) There are different levels of tutorial for all levels of experience, from beginner to expert. The CBT materials function only on the Windows operating system. Mac users will need a Windows simulator such as running on their Mac such as VirtualPC.

Insert Video and Audio Clips

Critical to making the next step work reliably is creating a folder and having your Powerpoint file and your video and or audioclips in the same folder. Once this is done, the procedure for inserting videoclips and audioclips is very easy. Click on Insert in the menu bar. From this menu, select Movies and Sounds and from there select Movie from file or Sound from file and find the needed file.

Capture and Insert Still Images (review)

When we covered desktop publishing earlier this semester, the assignments there reviewed the many ways in which you can obtain digital still images to insert in your newsletter or web pages. The same hardware and software tools would be needed to move other images into your Powerpoint presentation. Recall that using anyone else's work requires you to provide attribution. That is, cite your source!
 
• Video. Use video digitizing cards that digitize live camcorder or videotape work. Use Apple Video Player on a Mac the Macs in Killian 268 to grab stills from video. On Windows computers with video digitizing cards, use the application Premiere (3 Windows stations in K268; 1 in Hunter and one in Belk).
• Paint or Draw by Hand. Create computer images by hand using Paint and Draw features. The draw feature is also available in Microsoft Word and perhaps most flexible in Powerpoint.
• Scanners. See the scanner tutorial.
• Digital camera. Use the Quicktake 150 or other digital still cameras from the College of Education and Allied Professions.
• Clipart. In Clarisworks, use the Library command found under the File command in the menu bar to reveal clipart. In Powerpoint, click on Insert in the Menu Bar and drag down to Pictures. Nearly all image manipulation programs provide clip art collections.
• The Web. On  a Mac hold the mouse button down on a web page image for a couple of seconds and a menu appears with a command to copy the image to the clipboard so that you can later paste it into some destination file. Another option is to save it your a disk or drive and then insert the file.  On a windows computer, right click the image, and from this menu your only option is to save the file to disk or a drive.

Powerful Feature: Use a Microphone to Narrate the Slideshow

This is an interesting option that is very useful for eliciting speech from classroom students. It of course requires that you have a microphone (inexpensive ones have been available at Walmart for under $10). More recent versions of Powerpoint have command for inserting sounds with the slides. There are two different approaches, one which stores the sounds directly in the powerpoint presentation file and therefore limits the quantity of sound to the size of the computer's RAM or memory, and another which stores the sounds as separate files in a designated folder on the hard drive, and is therefore only limits the quantity of sounds to the size of the drive storage system. With these features, your Powerpoint presentation becomes truly useful for shows that are independent of the presenter's presence.

Under the the Insert menu, find Movies and Sounds, then the command Record Sound, which allows sounds to be inserted directly from a connected microphone. This sound is embedded with the powerpoint file. These sound files can be very long, but the total size of the sound files can be no longer than the amound of computer memory available on the computer workstation. If the viewer will manually be moving from one slide to the next, this approach will work, given its storage limitation.

Under the Slideshow menu is another command called Record Narration. Using this command to record up to several minutes of sound per slide, the program will remember to show the slide for as long as the narration runs, then advances automatically to the next slide when the narration for a slide is finished. However, this process works best if you complete all of your slides, then use Record Narration to talk your way through the entire slideshow. This Record Narration approach allows the storage of sound as separate files in a separate folder. Consequently, it is wise to first create a folder for a powerpoint presentation, and put the powerpoint slide file in that folder along with any sound narration files and other media elements such as videoclips. Only the sound file that is needed for a given slide is brought into computer memory, enabling the storage of a very large amount of sound per Powerpoint presentation.

Presentation Time

Though slideshow presentation files are stored on web sites, ZIP disks, CDs and other mass storage systems, do NOT run the presentation from them. Copy the folder with the Powerpoint presentation to the hard drive of the computer that will be used for the presentation. Since hard drives have a much much faster data transfer rate, the slides and their media will display more efficiently and effectively when done in this way.

Evoke (Composition Assignment)

Electronic Slideshow Design and Linking Video and Audio

Now that you've learned how to use Powerpoint (PPT) to create presentations, use it to create one of your own. This electronic slide show must be related to the topic of your Unit Plan with a title slide and a second slide that contains the CD or medium sized videoclip produced in chapter seven. The third slide needs to have some images related to your unit plan and the audioclip produced in chapter seven. The fourth and fifth slides must ask the class or a team in the class to put information on the slide during the presentation, based on their thinking or research. They might certainly come back and change or add to that information later in the unit plan.

You need to imagine two audiences for your slideshow: your students who will work through the unit plan and need to know what is coming, and other teachers interested in how you are integrating technology into this unit plan. Emphasize the use of this slide show as part of an introduction to your students about the unit plan. Slide two must contain the videoclip that you created as a part of the activity from Chapter 7 on Comprehensive Composition. Slide three must contain the audioclip created as a part of the same activity; slide three serves as backup to slide two in case the video is not playing.

On your slides, you may reuse images or other relevant text and resources from your web page development and image digitizing as long as this does not violate any copyright rules. Since your slides will be seen by a limited audience, Fair Use provisions apply and the appropriate language must be added to your slideshow to indicate your use of "fair use" resources. Since we no longer have ZIP drives on all the workstations in K268, store your work in progress in a folder (e.g., Windows PPT and Mac PPT) that is stored in your PAWS account).

You are to create one version on the Windows platform and another version on the Mac platform.

1. Create a folder for each one (Windows PPT and Mac PPT).
2. Put the medium AVI and the audio only WAV file in the Windows folder. Put the medium .mov file and the audio only .aif file in the Mac folder.
3. It does not matter which platform is used to create the slides. Once it is created on the folder for the first platform, including the video and audio links, save it once more into folder for the second platform and delete and re-do the video and audio links using the video and audio files in the second folder. Copy your folders with work in progress to the PAWS server using WS_FTP.


Questions about this process can also get answered until late hours of the night when the Computer Center Help Line is open, 227-7487, not Saturdays, but Sun evenings and other days of the week and also the Tech Center in Hunter Library during the week. But try this and see if you can avoid the phone call or visit to me, but if not, make an appointment with your instructor. Once your files are ready and understand the process, it will take just seconds to insert video or audio files into a Powerpoint presentation.

Step-by-Step Directions for both Mac and Win platforms

1. Making folders: From the desktop, go to My Computer, open your disk, find the icon for making folders and create two folders, one called Mac PPT and one call Win PPT.
2. Placing files: move the .AVI and .WAV files in the Win folder; put the CDROM or medium sized .MOV file in the Mac PPT folder and move the audio only .AIF file into that same folder.
3. Save or drag your Powerpoint file into the Win PPT folder. Open it and save it once more, this time into the Mac PPT folder.
4. Inserting Video: open the Win folder Powerpoint file; when you are on the slide that will display the video, click Insert from the menu bar, select Movies and Sounds, select Movie from file and find the .AVI file and insert it. Now repeat this on the same slide, select Movies and Sounds but this time select Sound from File: insert the .WAV file. Quit the powerpoint file.
5. Open the powerpoint file in the Mac PPT folder. Go to the slides that needs the video and audio. If there is a link to video and audio there, delete them, and re-do them, this time linking to the movie and sound files in the Mac folder. Use the same general process.
6. Put a copy of the folder with this Powerpoint project in the PAWS server.

More detailed Directions by Platform

Win Platform Details

Using your Powerpoint and effective presentation skills and the above knowledge, create the required ten slides. Create and save your Powerpoint slides into the Windows PPT folder.
 
1. Prepare a videoclip for use on the Windows platform.
2. If you need to create a digital video or digitial audio file, use the one of the video editors dealt with in the Video Composition chapter (e.g., iMovie or Premiere).
3. If you have not already converted the video file to .AVI format, use Quicktime Player on our Mac computers in Killian 268 to open the medium size iMovie file and then use Quicktime Player's Export command to save the movie as an AVI file. That is:
1. Download from the PAWS server the folder that is needed.
2. From the Mac, start up Quicktime player from the Apple menu or the Launcher screen.
3. Have Quicktime open the movie by clicking on file in the Quicktime Menu Bar, select Open Movie, and click the desktop button to find and click on your file.
4. From File in the Menu Bar, select Export Movie and from the drop down box select Movie to AVI which indicates that the file will be saved in the format AVI.
5. Click on Save and the conversion process will begin. The time that this takes will vary with the length of your movie, but it will be a long time, perhaps 20 minutes for a 20 second clip. When this process finishes there will be another movie file on your desktop with the extension .AVI.
6. Move this AVI file into the Windows PPT folder that you created.
7. Repeat this process for your audio clip and save it as a .WAV file. Since the audio clip contains much less data, the conversion process will go much more quickly.
8. Any other separate media files that you insert into your Powerpoint presentation should also be in the same as your PPT file.
4. Use the Insert/Movie File command to insert the videoclip on one slide and the audioclip on another. These were two clips that you created in previous weeks. It is important to cite the source or sources of your video, audio and any other multimedia elements beyond Powerpoint clip art.
5. Remember that your Powerpoint file and your multimedia clips need to be in the same folder. That is, if you have a folder on your called Win PPT, in this folder should be a Powerpoint file plus the necessary video clip file (a file that ends with .avi) and your audio clip file(a file that ends with .wav).
6. Powerpoint can take a wide variety of other multimedia resources including still images from clipart, the Internet, scanners, videodisc, videotape and other sources.
7. Put a copy of the folder with this Powerpoint project in the PAWS server.

Mac Platform Details

Create and save your powerpoint slides created on another platform into the Mac PPT folder. Find the slides which contain the video and audio links and delete them (but not delete the slide). Once deleted, use the Insert/Movies command to find the needed .mov file in the Mac PPT folder to re-do the movie and audio inserts.
 

Submitting & Grading Your Powerpoint presentation

Grading Rubric

Possible Points	Earned Points	Grading Rubric Criteria
.	.	.

The Powerpoint presentation is due next week by the end of the last class session for the week. Make sure you have kept a backup of your presentation on your own computer and in your class PAWS account.  Print out the grading rubric for this assignment and score your own work. Have the Powerpoint presentation on your PAWS server and be ready to download to your class workstation class at that time. It is not a requirement to put your Powerpoint presentation online and link it to your web pages, and there may not be room in your web site account for this. Bring a CD-R or CD-RW disk to class at this time and we will burn your finished course web site (which also has your Powerpoint folders) to your CD at this time. If you can do the "burn" ahead of time and help others with this process, it will greatly help things along during class time.

Option - Not Assigned: Details for putting Powerpoint on the Web

Powerpoint slideshows can also be turned into web page displays. This is a useful thing to know how to do, but not a course assignment. These online slideshows can take up a large portion of the available file space a  server account.

To turn a Powerpoint presentation into part of a web site is not difficult, but one must carefully consider whether the effort is worth it for both the presenter's effort and the readers of the web pages. Powerpoint slides when done well are talking points, a terse outline of key ideas from which one speaks. Each slides is generally the basis for 2-4 minutes of speaking. Unless audio clips are inserted which provide what the speaker said about each of the slides, uploading Powerpoint files for the web is generally a bad idea. There are several reasons for this. Powerpoint files take up an excessive amount of file space compared with building web pages out of the slide images by hand. The large file sizes make the viewing process go slowly. Most importantly, most readers of the slides will get very litttle out of the online presentation unless the presenter is there to offer the details or if the very small amount of text that should be on each slide is sufficient to understand the speakers points on each slide.

Do not cram information on a slide to make up for someone not being able to hear the presenter. If you are running out of space for text on the slide, you are overdoing it. Overloading a slide is a misuse of this medium. People come to a presentation to hear you speak, not for them to read. If more text detail is needed, switch to a different media such as a word processor or web page.

How to tutorials

• By Microsoft: Creating Online Presentations [DOC] File Format: Microsoft Word 2000 - or  View as HTML.
• By University of Washington: Add an existing Microsoft PowerPoint presentation to your Web site.

For additional tutorials, try searching by "making online Powerpoint presentations" or something similar.

Online Powerpoint examples can be found below.

• College: Catcher in the Rye.
• High School Student Example: Recycled Copy Paper from Alternative Paper Products, Online Powerpoint Presentation.; many other Powerpoint examples from the NCSU summer program are available.
• Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-12 from ARTECH Online Academy. These presentations are set up for downloading and playing from your computer workstation.

For additional examples, try searching by "Powerpoint presentations" AND "middle school" OR "High School" OR "Elementary" or something similar.

 

---

Course Assignments Page.

---