Quickstart Guide: Using PowerPoint 2007 with eTEACH 4.0
This is a Quickstart Guide for eTEACH 4.0 users using Power Point 2007 on Windows. For the Mac Guide Click HERE.
This guide is designed to help get you up and running on the creation process of an eTEACH project. The heart and soul of any eTEACH project is arguably the PowerPoint. It is the source of information for users, the driving force behind the audio and video that accompanies it. In order to make sure that your PowerPoint is compatible with the latest version of eTEACH, you should follow the following simple steps:
- To begin, you need to create a power point. This can be done with either PowerPoint 2007 or 2003, but if your using 2007 you’ll want to make sure to save as a .ppt (more on that later).
- When your slides are finished, you can record a narration in PowerPoint if you wish.
- Recording the narration in PowerPoint allows you to transfer the rehearsed slide timings that accompany your narration over to eTEACH. This can save much time and energy when creating a eTEACH project.
- To record a narration, navigate to the slide show menu/tab and click on “record narration”
- When recording a narration in PowerPoint, it is IMPARATIVE that we change the audio quality settings that are the default in PowerPoint. PowerPoint is set up to record at a very low quality audio level by default, which results in terrible audio. In order to change this select “Change Quality…”
- And in the quality menu select “CD QUALITY”, then click OK
- Make sure that the “Link narrations in” checkbox is UNCHECKED. Having his box checked will render your PowerPoint incompatible with eTEACH 4.0. When you are finished setting up the recording, the record narration screen should look like this:
- From here you will record your narration, timing the slides to change with your narration. If you wish to keep your slide timed to your narration make sure that you select “save” when prompted at the end of recording your narrations.
- Now that our slides are finished, and our narration is recorded, we can save our PowerPoint and open it up in eTEACH (If you are using PowerPoint 2003 may skip this next step and go ahead to #5).But first we must make sure that our PowerPoint is saved as a .ppt file. PowerPoint by default saves as a .pptx and that last x makes eTEACH unable to read the PowerPoint file. So we must save as a .ppt file. This is fairly simple:
- Navigate to file>Save as… (or up to the “Office Button” and scroll down to save as…)
- Select “PowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation”
- Double check that you are saving the PowerPoint as a .ppt, select the location you wish to save in and click save.
- Navigate to file>Save as… (or up to the “Office Button” and scroll down to save as…)
- Next, make sure that you have the most current version of eTEACH installed. Open up eTEACH and select “New eTEACH Presentation”
- Navigate up to File>Import>PowerPoint
- Select the folder which has your PowerPoint, then select your PowerPoint and click “Okay”
- eTEACH will now import your PowerPoint Content.
- The last thing to do is to save your eTEACH in the folder of your choice. Click on the save as button to do this.
- You may also want to add a table of contents to your slides, so that people viewing your eTEACH can easily jump from slide to slide, or start from where they left off. With the newer version of eTEACH, this is a simple and automated process.
- Simply navigate to Edit>Generate TOC From Slides or Generate TOC From Slides With Times to create automated table of contents. “Slides with Times” will give your TOC timings that match your slide timings.
- Lastly, if you want to preview your eTEACH project, simply click on the preview button and a browser window will open with your eTEACH presentation in its current form.
- That’s it! Congratulations! You’ve just created a new eTEACH project with a compatible PowerPoint. For more help or other Quickstart guides, see the left hand navigation menu. Also for a more personal learning experience with eTEACH, check out the Digital Media Center located at the Biotechnology Center. They offer one on one consults for free on a vast number of multimedia applications, including eTEACH.
