If you checked out the last blog post, you know that we are going through a bunch of updates that you might not have heard about regarding the main tools that we use here in Springfield. This week we are looking at PowerPoint and how amazing that it is. I’m not blowing smoke at you. When you check out these updates or Top 5s you will be amazed!​

Presenter Coach Improvements

I cannot tell you how much I love the Presenter Coach. I am so excited by this that I am even using it to prepare for conferences that I am speaking at. Giving a great presentation can seem like an art. You and I both know how a PowerPoint presentation can be derailed by their presenters. Whether it is reading from the slides, saying um or not making eye contact when you are speaking these habits can ruin a great presentation Presenter Coach will help improve your presentation skills whether you are an adult or student.

One of the big updates with Presenter Coach is that they have added a way to help you with your eye contact and posture. With the use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) you will become a better presenter by using this tool. When you are presenting, your body language sends a strong message that your listeners will interpret as part of your message. If you do a google search on body language and presentation, you will find hundreds of research articles that explain how this is important. By teaching your students about Presenter Coach, you will prepare them to give great presentations for years to come​.

If you do want to use this feature, you will have to turn your camera on and the A.I. will be looking for three things:

• Camera framing (can your viewers see you or your forehead)
• Distance from Camera (I.e., are you are too close or far away)
• Eye Contact

Each of these aspects will be scored and suggestions are given to you on how to improve your presence on camera.

Another update in the Presenter Coach tool is its ability to pick out when you repeat your words or phrases. We might not catch it when we are in the moment but the A.I. does. This will help the presenter work on varying their speech which will improve their presentation.

Pronunciation is another improvement that Presenter Coach has made. When we are presenting, we can have the tendency to not pronounce our words and this part of the coach will help with that. You will be able to listen to yourself and then you will even get a pronunciation guide. Check out this article from Microsoft on Presenter Coach.

Present directly into Teams from PowerPoint

PowerPoint has made strides in how it works within a Teams meeting. They have added a presenter view in Teams so that you can see what is coming in your presentation while the attendees will only see the slide. I know I have been in several meetings where the presenter doesn’t actually present the PowerPoint, they just have their presentation open in PowerPoint.

How does this work? When you are in Teams, you will select the PowerPoint you want to share. Any PowerPoints to present this way need to be located in the Team. It will automatically open in the Presenter view. Check out this image from below to what it looks like.

As a presenter you can see your notes and slides and those who are in the meeting will only see what is in red, which in this case is the first slide in the presentation. What is also possible is that if you have co-presenters presenting with you, only one of you needs to share the slide deck and then you would just give them control and their view will be switched too. With all of these improvements, it’s important to note that Microsoft listens to their users and one requested improvement to Presenter is the ability to use a laser pointer during the presentation. From what I can see with their product map, this is an improvement coming for the future. For anyone that has been using PowerPoints remotely these improvements that we talked about above is huge. Get ready to deliver professional presentations with the ease of just a couple of buttons.

Convert Word to PPT

We mentioned this in the last post but it’s worth mentioning again. You can take a boring, written presentation and turn it into an awesome PowerPoint! It’s super easy to do too! You go to File, then Export and then Export to PowerPoint Presentation. It will ask you a couple of questions and then boom! You have a well-organized PowerPoint presentation that you can turn around and tweak and make the best presentation of your life!

Again, I think back to some well-written reports that I would have had to turn around and present on. Using this tool can solve this issue by giving an excellent report a great starting point. Once it’s a PowerPoint then you can go in and edit it without fear or messing with your written report. For more info on this tool, check out last week’s post. Try it out and let me know what you think!

Recording

One thing you can do with PowerPoint is to turn PowerPoints into videos by recording audio onto slides, audio and video onto slides, or even do a screen recording with PowerPoint. When you are recording slides, you can do ink gestures, which means you can write on the screens a la Khan Academy. Maybe you spent time with this tool last year, maybe you didn’t know it existed.

The bonus of using PowerPoint to record your slides is that you can record audio as one slide at a time. Many of us try to record any audio in a single take, which can be difficult. By using this tool to record, you can record in parts and then when you turn it into a video it will seamlessly transition the slides and audio so it sounds like you recorded it all at once. One thing I will note is that your audio quality will depend on the microphone that you are using. Generally speaking, it is best to use a full audio recording setup but if you can’t do that, then follow this logic to get the best audio for your PowerPoint:​

You will notice that I mention a difference between USB microphones. There is a quality difference between USB microphones and it’s really important to read the reviews. They vary quite a bit.

PowerPoint Live

If you’ve not heard yet, PowerPoint has been making strides to become the best tool around for presentations. Sure, you can do fancy things with a tool like Prezi or embed with a tool like Google Slides. But nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to what PowerPoint is now capable of.

PowerPoint Live is part of the presentation tools within PowerPoint. Attendees will use their own device to view PowerPoint. While that doesn’t sound groundbreaking listen to this next part. When users scan the QR code in the PowerPoint they can choose what language they would like the subtitles in. Through the A.I. process, users can select from 60+ languages and it will translate what the presenter is saying in that language. Like everything else with A.I., the more you use it the better it gets. What’s great is that if there are 60 people taking part in the presentation, they can have 60 different languages going and it doesn’t affect any other user. Think of it like when the UN is having a meeting and they have live translations happening as they are talking.

Another aspect of PowerPoint Live is that the presenter can embed short surveys and they can integrate live feedback into their presentation. The scale is a basic one that can help you become a better presenter and help your students become star presenters. The results of your presentation go to your email, since PowerPoint Live lives on your OneDrive.

One thing to note with PowerPoint Live – you will need to go screen sharing mode instead of presentation mode or you will not be able to start Live Presentations.​

Wrapping Up

What do you think, did I miss any improvement? Have you tried any of these tools? Let me know in the comments below!