Powerpoint Books for Dummies

Dave Ferguson and Janet Clary reminded me of an important addage… It’s about the learner, stupid! They were more polite than that, of course. Please read the comments and Dave’s incredibly helpful blog post . I’m still processing their comments, but they helped a lot. My original thought, and one I need to revisit, is having the students bring one of their original PowerPoints . Preferrably a smaller one. Do the initial basic conversion DURING the training. For most of the students, this should take care of the basics of using Captivate. There is no reason for me to …

Marshal McLuhan
Slide 163: Powerpoint , audio, video, podcasts, simulations to
augment lectures
Slide …

Thinking aloud…..advice and recommendations welcome….. ———————————- We have been getting progressively more demand from both within our IT group and from outside departments to convert their 100+ slide information-heavy PowerPoints into 100+ slide information-heavy Captivate projects that they can put on our LMS. In response – the Director asked me to help develop a plan that would make our SMEs more independent. Essentially, letting them do the conversion themselves. Of course – I twitched a little. The thought of having hundreds of dull …

I had a conversation recently with someone that referenced a post I did back in June (It Takes A Lot Of Images). I showed this capture of my prepared images for 1 presentation:

There is a lot there, especially considering it was all for a 90 minute meeting. But my point is that if we go back to PPT 2000 the number of images would easily be twice as many. Back to PPT XP/2003 it would have at a minimum a 3rd more.

PPT XP/2003 with the semi-transparency features eliminated a large number of accent graphics that needed to be prepared in Photoshop and imported. Now with PPT 2007 I now do a lot of the image preparation (custom bevels, strokes, reflections, shadows, etc.) right in PowerPoint. So with each new version I accomplish more working directly in PPT, minimize the production time and have more material for tutorials and tips for ThePowerPointblog!

- Troy @ TLC

YawnBuster, just launched by Harbinger, “brings alive your PowerPoint slides with Group Activities such as
audience polls, games, group exercises and competitions. Now you can
get your audience to think, enjoy, participate and identify key
takeaways quickly and easily.”
With YawnBuster, you get Flash templates for group activities, which are embeddable right inside PowerPoint . You can sign up for a free trial to download.