Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular tool for creating slide-show presentations. If you use PowerPoint regularly to create content for your classes, you may wish to make the presentations available via your WebVista site. There are many ways you can do so; some are described below.
Recommended Options
Please note that the options below are for PowerPoint 2000–03 on Windows XP. The choices, advantages, and disadvantages may differ slightly with different versions of PowerPoint on Windows or Macintosh.
Option |
Description |
Designers Need |
Students Need |
Advantages |
Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Print to PDF |
If you have Adobe Acrobat installed, you can print your PowerPoint presentation to a single PDF file that you can add to your WebVista site. |
With Windows, you need Adobe Acrobat. With Mac, no extra software is needed; just print to PDF. |
[Acrobat Reader plugin link to Reader plugin] |
Presentations are easy to add to your site and easy for students to print. |
Animation, sound, and video clips are not included in the PDF. |
Breeze |
Breeze Presenter is basically a plugin for your installed PowerPoint. Using Breeze allows you to create and publish narrated PowerPoint presentations. |
Breeze presenter plugin |
[Shockwave Flash plugin link to the plugin download page] |
PowerPoint narrations and animations are retained. |
The designer piece is available only on Windows. If you’re not using sound or animation, using Breeze may be more than you need. This process creates several files. |
Save as PowerPoint Show |
Saves your presentation as a complete show that students can view but not edit. |
Nothing, but you must provide the viewer to students. |
One file is all that you need to upload. The save as PPS option built in to PowerPoint. |
Students must install the viewer on their computers. |
|
Save as HTML |
Saves presentation as HTML |
Save for Web is an option already built into PowerPoint. |
Nothing. |
Students can view the pages online. |
This process creates many files. Narration and animations will not play consistently. |
Using Breeze with PowerPoint and WebVista
One option for Microsoft Windows users is to publish PowerPoint presentations via Macromedia Breeze Presenter, licensed by the University. Breeze Presenter is basically an add-on to your PowerPoint application that lets you easily save your presentations, including narrated and animated presentations, as ShockWave Flash files that can be delivered from your WebVista or other Web site. Breeze Presenter is only one part of the University’s Breeze license. Other options include online publishing and small group Web conferencing; see the University of Minnesota Breeze site.
To publish your presentation on your WebVista site using Breeze and PowerPoint, follow the steps below. You must first have Microsoft PowerPoint installed on your computer.
Step 1: Get and install the Breeze Presenter plugin for PowerPoint.
- Go to the University of Minnesota Breeze site.
- Select the Get Breeze link.
- Select the link Activate Account.
- Log in with your University of Minnesota Internet ID and password.
- Choose a location on your computer where you want to save the Breeze installer file. The file will download.
- Double-select the Breeze installer file to install the Breeze plugin. After the plugin is successfully installed, you will notice a Breeze option in your PowerPoint menu bar, between the Slide Show and Window options.
Step 2: Publish your PowerPoint presentation to your local computer.
- In PowerPoint, open your presentation.
- Select the Breeze option in the menu bar and choose Publish.
- In the Publish window, make sure that My Computer appears in the left-hand menu bar.
- Browse to find the desktop or a folder where you want the Breeze presentation saved.
- Under Output Options, select the box for Zip files.
- Select the Publish button. Depending on the size of your presentation, this step may take several minutes. The final product will be a .zip file that is named based on your original PowerPoint presentation filename (example: if the original filename was lecture1.ppt, the zip file will be lecture1.zip).
Step 3: Add the presentation to your WebVista site.
- In your WebVista site, select the Build tab.
- Select the File Manager link.
- Select the Upload File button,
- Browse to find the .zip file you saved in Step 2 above.
- Select the checkbox to select Automatically expand uploaded Zip files.
- Select the Save button.
- When the upload is complete, you will have a folder [Jenny: where?] with the same name as your presentation and your .zip file. At this point, you can delete the .zip file to keep your site size smaller.
- From the File Manager window, select the Basic View tab to return to the homepage.
- Browse to the WebVista page in your site where you want the presentation to appear.
- Under Add to Home Page (or Add to Organizer Page) in the left-hand toolbar, select Content File.
- Select the Select File button.
- In the Choose Files window, select the folder with the same name as your presentation.
- Select the checkbox to select index.html.
- Select the Add Selected button