Course Description
Course Details
Take your PowerPoint presentations from ordinary to extraordinary! In these lessons, you'll learn how to use Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 (now available through Office 365) to create professional-quality slide presentations that grab and hold your audience's attention from start to finish. You'll start by learning how to plan and create dazzling slide presentations using a variety of slide and layout masters that make global changes to your presentation in a snap. You'll also see how to embellish your slides with pictures, shapes, WordArt, and SmartArt, as well as multimedia effects such as animations, slide transitions, audio, video, and text and object hyperlinks. And that's just the start! You'll explore the options on the PowerPoint Ribbon, including the new Tell Me feature (an enhanced Help feature) and Smart Lookup, which allows you to look up definitions of a word or phrase. You'll explore the File menu options and Backstage View, and learn how to print slides, handouts, and even an outline. And you'll discover the best view for creating and editing your slides and running your presentations, including how to use Reading View to proof your work. You'll have fun creating a PowerPoint photo album with your digital pictures, and become acquainted with OneDrive and PowerPoint Online to save, edit, and share your presentations online. Finally, you'll add versatility to your PowerPoint skills as you learn how to use the Share and Export commands to save presentations as PDF files, videos, and more. 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!
How It Works
This course is fully online, you require internet access and an email account. The course duration is 6 weeks, followed by a 2-week period to complete the final exam (online, open book). Lessons are released on Wednesdays and Fridays of each week, for a total of 12. You are not required to be online at any specific time. In addition to the specific lesson content, there is a discussion board with each lesson and often there is an optional assignment to apply the learning. Following each lesson, there is a short multiple choice quiz. Your score on these quizzes does not count towards the final mark but completing these helps solidify your learning as well as prepare you for the final exam. The final exam is an open-book, multiple choice exam and you need to achieve a minimum of 65% on the final exam to pass the course. There is only one opportunity to pass the exam. A certificate of completion from WatSPEED is available within four weeks of successful completion of each course and can be accessed in your student portal. Many of the Ed2Go courses are eligible towards the various online certificates offered by WatSPEED.
Requirements
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2016, or a subscription to Office 365 (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); Microsoft Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7 Service Pack 1, Windows 10 Server, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012, or Windows Server 2008 R. Note: This course is not suitable for Macintosh users or for users of any older versions of Microsoft PowerPoint. There is a PowerPoint 2016 version for Macintosh users, but this class is for Windows users.
Syllabus
Lesson 1 - The PowerPoint 2016 Interface. Come explore the basic features of Microsoft PowerPoint 2016! 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.
Lesson 2 - Creating Presentations. 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 create slides with a variety of 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 in Outline view. Finally, we'll go over the ways to put on a slide show. Important stuff in Lesson 2!
Lesson 3 - Creating and Editing Tables and Opening and Saving Files. 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 format 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 saving with different filenames.
Lesson 4 - Creating and Printing Error-free Presentations. 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, AutoCorrect, and Thesaurus features, along with the new Smart Lookup feature.
Lesson 5 - Working With Saved and Online Images. 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, and photographs. You'll even learn how to download an image from a website and insert the image on a slide.
Lesson 6 - WordArt, Shapes, and SmartArt. You're going to work with WordArt, Shapes, and SmartArt Graphics 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 text with SmartArt Graphics.
Lesson 7 - Creating and Editing a Chart. 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 the options on the Chart Tools contextual tab and the chart formatting buttons.
Lesson 8 - Making Global Changes to a Presentation. 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'll also make global changes when you modify your presentation's theme colors or background.
Lesson 9 - Creating Links. 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!
Lesson 10 - Applying Animation to Slides, Text, and Objects. 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, the options on the Transition tab, and you'll apply animation to text and objects on slides and the slide or layout master with the options on the Animations tab. You'll also find out how to add sound effects, such as chimes and whooshes, to slide transitions. And perhaps most important, you'll learn how to avoid overdoing these effects!
Lesson 11 - Applying Advanced Animation Effects to Text and Objects. 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 slides and slide and layout masters. With the animation commands and the Animation Pane, you'll add and reorder animated text and objects on slides. You'll also add an audio clip to your presentation.
Lesson 12- Sharing and Saving Your Presentations, Including OneDrive and Office Online. 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 2016. You'll learn to open, edit, and share your presentation online with a Windows OneDrive account and PowerPoint Online. And you'll turn your presentation into a video.
