What is PowerPoint?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation application developed by Microsoft and is part of the Office suite of applications.

• When designing a PowerPoint presentation, it will comprise of a number of individual ‘slides’. They are called slides because when the presentation is run, it is similar to a slide projection presentation.
• Slides can contain text, graphics, sound, movies and other types of information.
• Each presentation can be displayed on the computer to an audience and each slide can be set to move on in different ways:- either automatically after a set period of time, or manually by the presenter e.g. by clicking the mouse.
• Custom animations can also be set up for text on a slide, for example so that text can fade in, fade out, move or flash
• Custom animations can also be set up for pictures on slides in a similar way.
• PowerPoint can be a good way of showing information to a group of people as it can give structure to the presentation, make the subject more interesting and allow photos, videos etc to be used in the presentation.

Karen Maxwell is a Digital Unite tutor and assessor/trainer of computer accessibility.