Introduction to Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

About This Course

Take your PowerPoint presentations from “so-so” to sensational! In these lessons, you’ll learn how to use Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 to create professional-quality slide presentations that grab and hold your audience’s attention from start to finish.

First, you’ll explore the latest features of PowerPoint, from the all-new File menu to the Backstage View. After that, you’ll find out how to create dazzling presentations formatted with themes and a variety of slide layouts. You’ll embellish your slides with text, objects, SmartArt, multimedia, animation, sound, charts, clip art, and hyperlinks, and you’ll discover that global changes are a snap with the Slide Master.

In addition, you’ll find out how to download an online image and insert it onto a slide. You’ll also discover how to edit clip art, images, WordArt, and shapes easily with the commands on the Ribbon. You’ll explore the printing interface in Backstage View, and find out how to view your presentations in the new Reading View.

And that’s just the start! You’ll also learn how to create a PowerPoint photo album with your digital pictures, and you’ll work with PowerPoint Web App—an online version of PowerPoint. Finally, you’ll add versatility to your PowerPoint skills as you learn to save presentations as PDF files and videos.

Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, these lessons will teach you how to turn simple slides into a polished and exciting presentation that will make your message memorable. If you want to take your PowerPoint skills to a higher level, this is the course for you!

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Kathy Van Pelt.

Kathy Van Pelt has been involved in education for many years, teaching and assisting students with microcomputer application courses. Kathy specializes in Microsoft Office applications, the Windows operating system, and keyboarding. For the past 20 years, she has taught computer courses at a community college, teaching both in the classroom and online. Before that, she spent nine years teaching word processing and business classes at a private business college. She loves being in the ever-evolving educational field, and she's especially excited about the flexibility that online learning offers students.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

Come explore the basic features of Microsoft PowerPoint 2010! You'll learn about the Ribbon, which replaces the menu and toolbars so common in other programs written for the Windows operating system. You'll find out how to plan a presentation and start the PowerPoint program. And you'll practice working with different views, task panes, tabs, and templates.

Friday - Lesson 02

Now that you know the basics of PowerPoint, it's time to create a presentation from scratch. We'll start by choosing a theme for the presentation and slide layouts. You'll find out about the Live Preview feature, and we'll discuss how to save a file so you can find it later. You'll also create and edit slides in the slide pane and the Outline tab. Finally, we'll go over the ways to put on a slide show. Important stuff in Lesson 2!

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Including tables in your presentation lets you present a lot of information in a little space. So in this lesson, you'll add, revise, and reformat tables. I'll also show you multiple ways to open a presentation. Then, I'll teach you how to preserve different versions of your work by using different filenames.

Friday - Lesson 04

Today we'll cover two topics: printing and proofreading. You'll learn to print your presentation as slides, handouts, an outline, and notes pages. This versatility will really help you connect with audience members! And to make sure your printed presentation is as close to perfect as it can be, we'll explore the spelling checker, the AutoCorrect feature, the Research task pane, and the thesaurus.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

We're going to switch gears in this lesson and work with images instead of text, which I think you'll enjoy. I'll show you how to embellish your slides with media clips, which could include illustrations, clip art, photographs, videos, or audio clips. You'll even learn how to download an image from a website and insert the image on a slide.

Friday - Lesson 06

You're going to work with WordArt, Shapes, and SmartArt objects in this lesson, which I think you'll find exciting. It's fun to transform text into colorful WordArt objects and to draw and fill shapes with color and special effects. You'll learn to group and edit the objects you create. And you'll add visual sophistication to your slides with SmartArt features—including Venn diagrams, flow charts, and more.

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

In this lesson, you'll create and edit a chart slide to illustrate statistical data. You'll find this lesson easy if you like working with numbers! But if you don't enjoy math, that's okay—I'll walk you through everything you need to know and do to create a chart slide. I'll also show you how to change the look of your chart by using Shape Fill, Shape Outline, and Shape Effects.

Friday - Lesson 08

Making the same changes to dozens of PowerPoint slides is boring and time-consuming. Today we'll look at global changes you can make to your slides, handouts, and notes. For example, if you want to increase or decrease the font size on all the slides in a presentation, just make the change on the Slide Master. You also make global changes when you modify your presentation's theme colors or background.

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

In this lesson, we'll work with hyperlinks and action buttons. You'll enliven your presentation as you learn to create links from text or objects to other slides, presentations, documents, and Web pages. You can even add sounds and 3-D effects if you want!

Friday - Lesson 10

Have you seen a presentation where text, images, or entire slides fly in from the top or push up from the bottom? That's animation. In this lesson, you'll learn about slide transitions, and you'll apply animation to individual slides and the Slide Master. You'll also find out how to add sound effects, such as chimes and whooshes. And perhaps most important, you'll learn how to avoid overdoing these effects!

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

You already know how to apply animation to your slides as they transition. Now it's time to apply advanced animation effects to text and objects on individual slides and Slide Masters. With the animation commands and the Animation Pane, you'll add and reorder animated text and objects on slides. You'll also add sound clips to your presentation.

Friday - Lesson 12

Now that you know so much about creating PowerPoint presentations, we'll focus on different ways to save and share them. You'll see how easy it is to make your presentation into a PDF file, so it'll be accessible on computers that don't have PowerPoint 2010. You'll learn to open, edit, and share your presentation online with a Windows Live account. And you'll turn your presentation into a video.

Requirements

Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, or XP with Service Pack 3; Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 or Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (please be sure to install this software on your computer before the course begins), Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader). A free 60-day trial version of Office 2010 may be available at http://www2.buyoffice.microsoft.com/usa/?torb=4&WT.mc_id=ODC_ENUS_GenTry_Control.

Note: This course is not suitable for Macintosh users, nor for users of any older versions of Microsoft PowerPoint.