Microsoft Powerpoint is the weapon of choice for salespeople and middle managers desperate to impress, but it can also be a fun tool to help with homework, design pictures, comics and more. Check out our Top 10 Microsoft PowerPoint Tips for kids.
Make a comic book
Use Powerpoint’s ability to arrange pictures with captions to make a comic book. We’ve made a guide to help you out.
Create a great looking quiz
Use our guide to create a fun quiz with animated questions and answer reveals. We’ve made designing how the quiz looks easy, now its up to you to think of some questions to test your family.
Make fab photo albums
Powerpoint has some cool photo effects hidden away that can help you make photo albums that show off your digital snaps in fantastic, fun ways. Our how-to guide will show you what to do.
Make a great-looking timeline
Timelines are a useful way of representing stuff that happens in a sequence. We have used them for homework projects as diverse as English Lit and history and to make personal timeline posters that show key events in kids’ lives. Check out our feature here.
Embed YouTube video in Powerpoint
Embedding video in Powerpoint used to be a pain, but you can now stick a YouTube clip right in a Powerpoint slide. Just grab the embed code from the vdeo’s YouTube page (click the ‘Embed’ button underneath the video to get it and copy that to the ckipboard. In Powerpoint, click the Insert tab, then Video and select ‘Video from web site..’ Paste the embed code in and the video will appear.
Make a video from your presentation
You can save your presentation as a video file that can be played on a PC, uploaded to YouTube or converted to DVD. Just click on File then Save & Send and then Create Video. You can choose the quality/size of the video and the length of time to insert between slide transitions before saving the video as a .WMV file.
Add transitions to your pages
A dull presentation can be given a makeover with a few cool page transitions. Click the Transitions Tab and select More to choose from a variety of effects like Page Turning or Ripple.
Instant Laser Pointer
Hold down the CTRL key and the left mouse button to turn the mouse pointer into a glowing red laser pointer dot that you can use to point out important areas of the screen, or just waggle around distractingly. You can select the colour of the pointer using the Set Up Slideshow button on the Slideshow tab.
Insert a live web page
Powerpoint doesn’t support embedding live websites into presentations, but you can donwload a free add-in called Live Web that will do the trick. Full details here.
Do quick image editing without leaving Powerpoint
You don’t have to use image editing software like Photoshop to tweak images in your presentation. Powerpoint has some quite powerful tools built in. Click on an image and select the Picture Tools tab that appears. This contains buttons for Crop, Corrections (sharpen, alter exposure, etc.) and Remove Background among other effects.
The Kids Matter – The economics of fatherhood – #1 Health video was made using Microsoft PowerPoint 2010