PowerPoint 2010: Empowering Rapid eLearning

I've been an avid PowerPoint user, enthusiast, trainer and "evangelist" for many years.

I remember when I discovered the power of manipulating the clip art gallery and still feel the awe I felt when I discovered how to ungroup those clip objects so that I could manipulate the colours and even change the shapes slightly. That was PowerPoint 97 – and I immediately fell in love with the great things PowerPoint had to offer.

As I developed my skills, I shared my enthusiasm with countless students both on the corporate training front and at the post secondary level when I taught at Conestoga College. While the majority of those I taught were there to learn how to create presentations for sales, I always found a way to share how wonderful PowerPoint was as a tool for educating. (After all isn't a sales presentation a way to educate potential buyers?)

Now is no different. Now I have some really wonderful tools to share with you, when you create your next educational PowerPoint!

Screen Shot Tool/Photo Album

From the insert menu there are a few tools which have definitely made me a happy PowerPoint camper! If I had to create rapid eLearning with a budget, these tools would be top of my list. The Screenshot tool, when used in conjunction with other open applications, minimizes the PowerPoint window, places a semi-transparent screen over the desktop window so that you can click and drag to create a screen clip the size and shape you want – and it uses the windows clipboard to immediately copy and paste the screenshot into the open PowerPoint presentation.

I have found this to be very helpful when creating software training and simulations. And it's a much more thrifty use of investment dollars over spending money on screen clipping software. It's also a lot faster and easier than using the old "print screen" button and then cropping the image to suit.

The Photo Album is also very helpful for eLearning. The original purpose of the Photo Album tool is to create a presentation from the images. I use this tool to organize my images and insert them into my elearning. Having my images in one place makes it faster to put my learning together making it truly "rapid".

New Picture Tools


For people like me, these new picture tools are amazing, and quick! No longer do we need to use a third-party imaging program such as Adobe's Photoshop to edit images. Now we can use the new tools to remove background from images (helpful if you only want one part of an image, a person rather than the whole image). The Corrections tool lets you sharpen of soften an image and make image corrections. The Color tool provides an opportunity to quickly re-colour a selected image, and adding artistic effects is just plain FUN!

Here is an image in its original state and then using the "Light Screen" effect. Cool right? And it took three clicks.

1. Select the image
2. Select Artistic Effects
3. Select the effect you want.

There are loads of other great features of PowerPoint 2010 and I'm sure I will find a way to discuss them all, but for now, I'm going to continue to play with these features to help me quickly create elearning courses and add interest to my course images!