Creating a presentation

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. Teachers, offices and businesses explain ideas with slide shows every day. How do you make one from nothing? Today we will learn to create a presentation, step by step, and save it the right way.

Let us learn some key words first. A presentation is a set of slides shown one after another to explain a topic. A slide is one page of that presentation. Presentation software is the program used to make them, like Microsoft PowerPoint, LibreOffice Impress or Google Slides. A PowerPoint file is saved with the extension .pptx.

Here are the parts of the PowerPoint window. The Ribbon at the top holds all commands, arranged in tabs. The slide pane on the left shows small pictures, called thumbnails, of every slide. The slide area in the centre is where you edit the current slide. The notes pane below the slide holds notes for the speaker, which the audience does not see. The status bar at the bottom shows the slide number and the zoom.

There are a few ways to start. Blank Presentation gives you an empty title slide, and you design everything. A template is a ready file with design and sample content, which you just replace. A theme is a matching set of colours, fonts and backgrounds that you can apply any time. Inside PowerPoint, Ctrl+N creates a new blank presentation.

Let us create a blank presentation step by step. First, open PowerPoint from the Start menu. Click Blank Presentation, and a title slide appears. Click in the placeholder boxes and type the title and the subtitle. Then go to the Design tab and pick a theme to give it a look.

Let us look at placeholders. A new slide already has some dotted boxes, called placeholders. They show hints like click to add title or click to add text. Just click inside one and start typing. If you leave a placeholder empty, it is not shown during the slide show.

A layout decides which placeholders a slide has. Title Slide has a title and a subtitle, and is used first. Title and Content has a title and a box for bullet points or a picture. Two Content has two boxes side by side, good for comparing. Section Header starts a new part of the talk. Blank has nothing, and suits a big picture.

Now let us add more slides. On the Home tab, click New Slide. Click the small arrow on the New Slide button to choose a layout first. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+M. You can also click a thumbnail in the slide pane and press Enter.

PowerPoint gives different views on the View tab. Normal view is where you edit one slide at a time. Slide Sorter view shows all slides as small pictures, so you can reorder them. Notes Page view shows a slide with its speaker notes. Reading View and Slide Show let you watch the presentation.

To present, you run the slide show. Press F5 to start from the first slide. Press Shift+F5 to start from the slide you are on. Go to the next slide with a mouse click, Enter, Space bar or the right arrow key. Press Escape to end the show at any time.

Always save your work early. Press Ctrl+S, and the first time, the Save As box opens. Give the file a clear name, like Water Cycle. The default type is PowerPoint Presentation, with the extension .pptx. To share a copy that others cannot edit easily, save it as a PDF file.

Pause and predict. You are editing slide six of a ten slide presentation. You press Shift plus F5. Which slide appears first on the screen? Slide six, because Shift plus F5 starts from the current slide.

Here are some tips for good slides. Keep one idea on each slide. Use short points, not long paragraphs, because people listen to you, not read. Choose a large clear font with good contrast, like dark text on a light background. And use the same theme on all slides so they look like one set.

Let us revise what we learned today. A presentation is a set of slides shown one by one, and PowerPoint saves it as .pptx. You can start from a blank presentation, a template or a theme. Ctrl+M adds a slide, and a layout decides its placeholders. F5 starts the show from the beginning, and Shift+F5 from the current slide. Make a five slide presentation on your favourite festival to practise.