Next, we’ll take a look at a super common program, which I kind of hate.
One of the first programs that people tend to play around with is PowerPoint. You’ve surely made slideshows for presentations or projects in other classes. The problem with PowerPoint, and the reason I hate it so much is that it looks too easy and everybody uses it horribly. You can get started really easily and make a presentation that you think looks lovely but usually, they’re not actually very good.
Most of the time, people don’t have a clue just how much PowerPoint can do. We’ll create a project that shows you some of the many, many options available in PowerPoint, and I’ll encourage you to play with the program and discover new possibilities and capabilities.
You’re going to create a simple multiple-choice quiz on a topic of your choice. The idea is to teach someone about something that you know. If you know a lot about hockey or cars or BTS, feel free to make a quiz about that. If you aren’t an expert on something like that, an easy topic that you’re guaranteed to know a lot about is yourself!
Choose a topic and start by figuring out what your questions will be. Have an organized quiz that makes some sort of sense. You will have ONE slide that tells people that they’ve gotten the answer wrong and directs them back to try the question again (mine is a little bit different but would take more work, so you shouldn’t do that the same as me.)
Each of your questions will have a slide telling the viewer that the answer is correct, and it should provide a bit more information about the question. That slide will direct the viewer to the next question.
Start by opening PowerPoint
Choose Blank Presentation!
I know you’re tempted to choose one of the fancy templates, but DON’T!
STAY AWAY FROM THESE: 
The first thing to do as always, is to SAVE your file
Either click the Save button 
or go into the File menu and choose Save
The best way to go is to choose Browse
and make sure your file goes into your Documents folder
What’s your quiz about? Call it THAT! Mine’s about me, so I’m calling it Robson Quiz. If yours is about hockey, call it Hockey Quiz, etc.
Press Save
That first blank slide is set up to be a title slide with a box for the title and a subtitle
Fill in your Quiz title in the title box and your name in the subtitle box
You can add new slides for your questions with the New Slide button. You can change the layout of the slide if you wish by clicking the triangle and choosing a different layout. For this project, I usually just choose either Title Slide or Title and Content. Content with Caption would also work if you want pictures on your slides.
The MOST IMPORTANT thing for you to do is to get your questions figured out and those slides created. Normally I’d get you to do those before you do any work prettying things up, but you can save yourself a bit of work by copying slides, so I’ll demonstrate some of those steps now.
IMPORTANT: Always change your font! I WILL take off marks if I spot Calibri on any of your slides, so take the time to change the font EVERYWHERE!
To change that plain, boring, white background, go into the Design menu/tab:
Again, you’ll see some fancy, pretty options and you’ll want to click those. DON’T!!!
Instead, choose Format Background
There are plenty of ways to change that background on your slides
The first one is Solid fill, which fills the background with a solid colour
Choose any colour you like. Go ahead, it’s FUN!
Next you could choose Gradient fill. That’s a fun one
That creates a background where colours kind of blend together. It comes up with this blend from white to blue:
But you should customize it and choose your own colours!
It comes up with 4 little bookmarks that can be customized. You can click on each of those little pointers and choose a new colour
If you don’t need 4 colours there (and really, why would you?), you can delete one by clicking the little pointer with a red X on it:
You can choose your colours and move the little pointers around as much as you like to customize your gradient:
Next you could choose Picture or texture fill. This is a really fun one…
You can, if you wish, find your own HIGH QUALITY picture to put in the background OR click Online… and look for one (recommended)
These ones are even Creative Commons, so you can legally use them without stealing anything!
Choose from one of the many categories of photos:
Choose a photo you like
and click Insert
But there’s a PROBLEM with using photos in the background! They make your text REALLY hard to read, so you have to do some work to fix that!
The first way to fix it is by changing the colour of the text (and don’t forget to change that Font if you haven’t!):
You may also wish to move your text around to a better part of the photo by clicking on the edge of the text box and moving it.
You could also fill in the text box to make your text MUCH easier to read. Click on the text box:
and choose Format
You could change the Shape Fill
While you’re at it, why not change the Shape Outline
You might also wish to change the Weight (thickness) of the outline
Another cool way of making your slide look great is by properly centering everything. If you select a text box (or shape or picture or anything else)
You could also choose Arrange and then have the program put the box/shape/picture right in the middle of the page horizontally:
or vertically
You could even select your Title box, hold down Shift, and select the subtitle (name) box and Align the two items together
You may also wish to add some pictures on top of your slides. The photos in the background can make the text hard to read and the text on top makes the pictures hard to see, so sometimes it’s better to have your photos beside the text instead of under it.
Just like in Word, you could download a photo off of the Internet and could Insert it onto your slide. As with before, make sure that you are downloading good quality images if you are going to do things this way.
Even better than that, you could use the Online Pictures that we explored for your slide background. These ones have a couple of benefits. These ones are guaranteed to be good quality, and these ones are ones that you have permission to use as you want. Most photos you download from the internet are copyrighted and you could potentially get into trouble for using them, but the ones in the Online Pictures library are licensed for you to use, so go ahead!
You can go into the Insert menu/tab and click Online Pictures
And then explore the same categories as before
You can also insert little icon images which can be kind of fun. These might make neat buttons for you to use to click on to advance your slides
again there are different categories to explore
Something new that’s pretty fun is that you can add 3D models to your slides now as well. Some of them are even animated, so they move when you’re looking at your slideshow.
Remember to only use these if they make sense with the content on your slide. For me, adding an astronaut would make absolutely no sense with anything in my quiz, so I wouldn’t keep it, but just to show you:
Because it’s 3D, you can rotate it around to position it however you like, and this one is animated, so the astronaut kind of floats on the slide.
In order for the viewer to navigate through your show, they will need some kind of button to click on to advance to the next slide.
In the Insert menu/tab, click on Shapes
TWO choices: (YOU DO NOT NEED BOTH, just one)
- Choose an arrow or shape that will represent your “Next” button
Click and drag out to draw the shape
Take the time to go into Format and change the Shape Fill and Shape Outline
You should also let people know what the shape is for, so you should add a text box and let them know that they need to click the shape to advance
The other option is to choose something called an Action Button
When you choose an Action Button, it’s automatically set up to link to another slide or address. We’ll go into this later, so just ignore that box for now.
Don’t forget to customize the Shape Fill/Outline
Your second slide should look different than the first. Please choose a different background or change the look of your text boxes, buttons, etc.
You may either create a new slide
Or you may duplicate the first slide and make significant changes.
To duplicate a slide, you can either right-click on it and choose Duplicate Slide
Or go into the Insert menu, click the triangle below New Slide, and choose Duplicate Selected Slides
The two slides should look different
The second slide basically tells people what they are looking at/doing.
From there, you just need to add at least 5 slides with multiple choice questions. Give each question at least 3 different options as answers. These slides DO NOT NEED a shape or button, because people will have to click on the answers to proceed.
Come up with 5 creative, interesting, and fun questions for yourself!
You also need ONE slide that tells people they got the wrong answer. There will be a button on this slide that will allow the viewer to go back and try again, so feel free to add text that says “Try Again” or something like that
You also need a “Right” answer slide for every question. You need at least 5 questions, so at least 5 slides like this. This slide will direct people to answer the next question.
NOTE: It’s fun for me to learn a bit more about you by doing this, so if you want to add a little bit of information or an explanation to your “Correct” slides, please do so! Tell me a bit more about yourself!
The last slide will tell people that the quiz is over and offer them the option to either quit or try again
Make sure you SAVE your work and move on to Step 2!