1. A Tutorial by Aaron Price
Lesson 3 – PowerPoint
A Tutorial by
Aaron Price

2. Introduction
PowerPoint is a very powerful and effective presentation tool.  It is included in the Microsoft Office suite, and when combined with a projector (which is included in most classrooms), it allows for a much more attractive way to present material to students than overheads or whiteboards.  The ability to include themes, graphics, audio and video may be just enough to keep that sleep-deprived student awake for another 50 minutes.  In this lesson we will explore some of the different features of PowerPoint and also some basic presentation techniques.
The first thing that you'll need to do is create a new presentation.  When you first open PowerPoint, it may create a blank one for you, but if not select File->New from the menu.  PowerPoint will bring up a dialog on the left, from which you'll want to select "From Design Template”

3. Choosing a Template

4. Choosing a Template
PowerPoint will now provide you with a cover page, and you will want to select a template that all your pages are going to use.  There are a lot of really good built in ones, so scroll through the list on the right until you find one that you like.  You can change themes at any time, so this isn't vitally important that you find the exact one you want, since you can always change your mind.
You should now have nothing but a title page.  PowerPoint is kind enough to give you pre-set places to put your title and subtitle.  Once you have that information, you should have a completed cover page that will look something (but not exactly, since different themes will look different) like this:

5. A Cover Page Example

6. Adding Slides
Now that you've chosen your template and created your cover page, you're ready to begin the real work.  I would like to suggest at this point that if you have a bunch of overheads that you convert them to PowerPoint.  This way they will be easily editable, portable, and be much more pleasing to the eye.  One option is to scan the overheads and then use text recognition software to import them into PowerPoint.  I'm not going to go over all of that here, but if you are interested in doing this, please me and I would be glad to help you. Otherwise, you can always have a TA copy them by hand for you.
Moving on, I'm going to show you some things about adding and removing slides, inserting pictures and other media, as well as transitions. 
To add a slide, simply right-click on the Slides pane on the left side of the page, and select "New Slide":

7. Adding Slides

8. Inserting Media
Now that you have created your next slide, choose a layout on the right and edit the slide.  Changing the order of slides is as simple as dragging them up and down the list; to delete, simply click on a slide and press the delete key.
To insert text, images, tables, graphs, or other media, simply select the appropriate option from the insert menu.  Also, some of the layouts include pre-set areas for these things.  For these, all you have to do is click on the appropriate icon on the slide.

9. Inserting Media

10. Inserting Text
Once you have your picture/text/graph/table/etc. on the slide, you can drag the corners to resize and rotate, or click on the border and drag to move.
A note on inserting text: to insert text, which is kind of important for a presentation, select insert -> text (or click on the insert text icon on the bottom of the screen - the square with the letter A and the horizontal lines).  You will now have a downward-pointing arrow.  Click anywhere on the slide and begin typing.  The box will expand as you add text, and it acts otherwise like any other word processing program.  Use the text formatting icons on the top to change font, size, bold, etc.  You can move the text around by dragging the border.

11. Transitions
One of the nice features of PowerPoint is the different transitions that you can do.  Transitions are effects that occur between slides, such as one slide moving off the right side of the screen to reveal the next slide, or perhaps the slide dividing into several pieces and going in different directions off the screen.  To access the transitions, select Slide Show -> Slide Transitions from the menu.  This will bring up the slide transition pane on the right of the screen.  You can preview all of the different transitions, but my recommendation would be to scroll all the way to the bottom and select the Random Transition option, and click Apply to All Slides.  This will do a random transition between every slide.

12. Transitions

13. Saving, Presenting, and Conclusion
Finally, you're going to want to save and present this thing!  Save it in the usual way, File -> Save from the menu.  There are several ways to begin presenting - the easiest is by clicking on the little icon in the lower-left corner... I guess it kind of looks like a presentation screen... it's the third from the left in the little row at the bottom of your slide pane, right above the word "Draw".  Otherwise you can select Slide Show -> View Show from the menu, or easier yet press the F5 key.  Click the mouse button (or, alternately, press either the enter, space, or left arrow key) to scroll through slides.  There are other options here too, such as using a remote control to go through slides.
If you would like to see an example of a completed PowerPoint presentation, click here to download this tutorial in PowerPoint format.
That's it!  As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact my by any of the means located on the main page.  I would be more than happy to spend some time doing these things one-on-one.  PowerPoint is a very useful tool, and it's almost a shame that so many professors continue to use overheads for presentations in classrooms that are already equipped with a (very expensive) projector.  If you decide to convert your entire curriculum from overheads to PowerPoint, I guarantee that you will not regret it.