Step 1: Expand your Week 5 introductory slides into a full slide set As you work toward your full slide set, try out the structure described in the link:  A Model for Speaking by Ed Bailey (Links

A few sets of directions for managing PPT features

Here's a list of directions generated from past classes. Please feel free to send me additions and corrections!

• Adding "builds" to bulleted lists

• Designing concise slides

• Removing a stock PPT template

• Sampling other features

  • Outline Tab

  •  Presenter View

  •  Custom Shows

  •  Published Slideshows

 Adding "builds" to bulleted lists

Here's how I add builds to a single slide. I'm using MicroSoft Office 2010:

• Open your slide set in View-->Normal.

• Click on a slide with a list you want to build. It will appear in large form in the middle of your screen. 

• Click on the Animations

  • Click on "Add Animation."

  • Highlight your first bullet point item. Click on "Appear" (type of animation). 

  • Highlight your next bullet point item. Click on "Appear."

  • Continue the process until you've built all of your items.

• Save your slide set. 

• Check your builds by bringing up the slide you've just built and clicking on the Slide Show

• Click on "Current Slide."

• Click once to see your first bullet, again to see the next, and so on. 

Here's a sample.

Please let me know if you have refinements to this process! I'll save these directions for future classes. 

Designing concise slides

One way to achieve concise slides is to move all complete sentences to your Notes space beneath the slide for oral delivery. That is, you’ll naturally speak in complete sentences to your audience, but you won’t appear to be reading aloud from your slides, an approach that’s likely to annoy your audience. After all, they could be elsewhere, quickly reading though your slide set on their own!

In the attached comparative slides, I’ve included

• an original slide featuring complete sentences

• a revised slide with the complete sentences moved to the Notes space below the slide

On the revised slide, I’ve condensed the long sentences to very short ones. For quick reading by an audience, I’ve made them parallel in structure. For example, all four of them begin with imperative action verbs, as you’d see in a resume—another document that needs to communicate information concisely but with energy.

A further benefit of conciseness: the speaker can now build the bulleted items. He or she  can bring each point up separately and add concrete examples or tell a story to make the point clear and memorable.

In conclusion, remember that a slide set is only a guide to or an outline of a presentation.

Removing a stock PPT template

Below, I describe one way to remove a template in order to keep content slides uncluttered and ready for bulleted lists, images, and screen shots. Here's a "before" sample, followed by an "after" sample:

• Open your slide set in View-->Normal

• Select a content slide

  • Click on the Design tab in the menu across the top of the screen

  • Put a check mark in the box in front of "Hide Background Graphics" on the far right of the new menu

• Repeat the above process for each slide you want to appear uncluttered by a template

Here’s another way to remove distracting background graphics:

• Open your slide set in View-->Normal

• Select a content slide

• • Right click on the large version of the slide in the center of your screen

  • Click on “Format Background”

  • Put a check mark next to “Hide Background Graphics” in the drop down menu

• Repeat the above process for each slide you want to appear uncluttered by a PPT template

Here’s how to change the background color of a slide:

• Open your slide set in View-->Normal

• Select a slide you’d like to have a different color

• • Right click on the large version of the slide in the center of your screen

  • Click on “Format Background”

  • Put a check mark next to “Solid Fill” in the drop down menu

  • Click on the color palette and click on the new color (or white) you want for the slide

• Repeat the above process for each slide you want to have a different background color

Sampling other features

Here's a slide set--in the structure we're practicing--designed by a former student in the course. In it, he describes how to use the following PowerPoint features:

• Outline Tab

• Presenter View

• Custom Show

• Published Slideshows

If you're interested in these features, you may benefit from viewing his slide set in Slide Show mode. He's included additional information in the Notes spaces below his slides. You can see this information in the Design view "Normal."