Powerful PowerPoint for Educators: Using Visual Basic for Applications to Make PowerPoint Interactive

Figure 2.4. Right Click the Mouse
The flyout menu that you see should look something like the menu in Fig-
ure 2.5. It will vary from browser to browser, but you should see “Copy” as one
of your choices. Choose “Copy” (by clicking or left clicking on the choice in the
menu). Now, when you switch back to your PowerPoint presentation, you can
choose “Paste” from the Edit menu to put the pic ture in your presentation.
Once a picture is in PowerPoint, it is an ob ject, and you can move it around,
resize it, or even as sign it ac tions. Pic tures are al ways em bedded in the pre sentation,
so you don’t need the orig inal picture file to see the picture within PowerPoint.
Sounds
PowerPoint presentations can in clude sounds in a wide range of formats.
Like pictures, the sounds can be in serted from clip art or from a file. Sounds can
also re fer to a CD track or be recorded, assuming you have a microphone con -
nected to your computer. You can make the appropriate se lection by choosing
“Movies and Sounds” from the Insert menu.
If you choose to use a CD track for your sound, then the CD must be in the
computer when you are in serting the sound and whenever you are run ning the
presentation. This works well if you are presenting something to an au dience,
but it works poorly if you are putt ing the presentation on several computers for
your stu dents. A better alternative might be to im port the CD track into your
computer, but you must be careful about copy right guidelines, which limit the
amount of a song you may use to 10 percent of the song or thirty seconds,
whichever is less.
18 Tra di tional Mul ti me dia Fea tures of PowerPoint

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Figure 2.5. Flyout Menu to Copy a Pic ture from a Browser
Recording your own sounds is a good op tion be cause, in an ed ucational set-
ting, much of the sound that is valuable is text that is read. If you teach students
who are still learning to read or students with special needs, pro viding a but ton to 
have text read can be very use ful. If you teach pro ficient readers, al lowing new
or dif ficult vo cabulary to be read can be very help ful. When you choose “Re cord
Sound” from the “Movies and Sounds” flyout menu of the In sert menu, you will
get a di alog box like the one in Fig ure 2.6. (Note that this di alog box will look a
little different depending upon which ver sion of PowerPoint you are using.) Be
sure that you give your sound a specific name so all your sounds are not named
“Re corded Sound.” Click on the circle to be gin re cording your sound and click
on the square to stop recording. Click on the triangle to listen to the sound.
The big gest prob lem with sounds is in serting them into your presentation
on one computer only to find that they don’t play on another computer. This usu-
ally has to do with whether the sounds are linked or embedded.