Thursday, March 31, 2011

Presentations

Most of you probably already know how to create Powerpoint presentations. In case you don't there are some guides below. This skills page will focus more on how to find, publish, and share useful presentations. Firstly, it's worth nothing that Powerpoint is not the only option for creating presentations and whereas Powerpoint costs hundreds of dollars to legally purchase, some other optoins are free.
  • Google Docs -  free to use with your gmail account. Much simpler and less sophisticated than Powerpoint, but makes it very easy to collaborate and publish online.You can upload save file as a ppt or pdf for offline usage and also upload ppt files you're already created with Powerpoint. (Google Presentation Guide here)
  • Impress - is part of the OpenOffice packagewhich is free and includes alternatives for MS Word and Excel as well. It's very similar  to Powrpoint, but a bit simpler to use and less sophisticated in its options.
  • Prezi is a site that allows you to create a different style of presentation. It can be shown online or downloaded for offline presentation. You can link to any of these presentations or embed them on your website.
    Printable Prezi Guide here.     Official Prezi Help Section  . Wikiman's Prezi Guide.

    Some presentations from Prezi, Slideshare and Authorstream can also be downloaded, but you'll need to create an account with each in order to do so.  Presentations made with Google Docs can also be downloaded, but there is currently no directory listing the Google Presentations.  

There are also a number of sites that allow people to upload their presentations so that other people can view (and sometimes download) them. Some of these are: Tasks:  Take some time to browse though presentaions on these sites.You don't have to look at everything, but try to find the types of presentations you might be able to use.  If you would like to try and download presentations, there is a download guide below. If you're feeling ambitious, go to google docs and create a google presentation (or upload an exisitng ppt) and embed it on your blog. Google Presentation Guide here
How to embed presentations on your blog
On the presentation page (Slideshare or other site), click 'embed' and copy the code. Customize if you wish.
Create a new post on your blog. Give it a title. Click 'edit html'. Paste the code, label appropriately.

How to download online presentations
From Slideshare
First, log in to your Slideshare or Authorstream account. When users publish presentations, they have the choice of making it available for download or not. If a presentation is downloadable, you'll be able to click on the download link.  You can also select the download option when searching for content, so that you'll only see downloadable presentations. When you find one you'd like to download, you should see a 'download' link at the top of the presentation.Click that and save the file.     
From Google Presentations
If you see a Google Presentation embedded on a page (like on this page: http://21ctools.wikispaces.com/Google+Reader )click Menu
Then cick the link to the presentation that looks like this
On that page, click Actions/Download at PPT

Below are some additional resources.  You don't have to do anything with these.  They are just here for your information. GuidesTech How to's

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