PowerPoint 97: Creating a Presentation

This documentation is designed to help teachers use PowerPoint in their classroom. It is not meant to be a complete guide to PowerPoint. However, it should help you learn the basics.

PowerPoint can be used as a presentation tool. You can also use it to display class warm-up activities, the days agenda, announcements and to help you manage your classroom.

Getting Started (Steps to follow are numbered and in Bold.) 1. Open PowerPoint from the Start Menu/Programs/Microsoft PowerPoint. The dialogue box at right will appear. You are given four choices. AutoContent Wizard, this is the easiest way to create a presentation. However, the content doesn't always match your goals. Templates, are the most used feature in PowerPoint. They lay out your screen, colors and design for you. Blank, simple plain white presentation. 2. Click on the radio button in front of "Blank Presentation" and click OK. We are choosing a blank presentation so we can learn some of the features. You should examine the templates at a later date so you can use them as needed.

3. At the New Slide dialogue box, shown at right, choose the third row, third from the right. It is outlined in blue in the picture. Click OK. The new slide dialogue box will appear each time you add a slide.   For our sample project we are going to create a presentation on one of the Great Lakes. You can gather information and images from http://www.50states.com or from a book on the states. 4. Save your presentation Choose Save from the File Menu. For this tutorial we will save the file to the desktop. You can save to anywhere on your computer, just make sure you know where you saved it!

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