You can in sert pic tures into a PowerPoint presentation in several dif ferent ways, in cluding by in serting from the clip art li brary, by in serting from an ex ist- ing file, and by copying and pasting from an other place, in cluding the World Wide Web. In ad dition, if you are ar tistically in clined, you can use the drawing tools to draw your own pictures. Gen erally pictures are em bedded in your PowerPoint presentation. That is, once you insert them, they become part of the presentation, regardless of what happens to the original picture.
PowerPoint recognizes many dif ferent types of picture files, in cluding most of the common ones you are likely to en counter, such as Graphic In ter- change For mat (.gif), Joint Pho tographic Ex perts Group (.jpg), Tag Im age File Format (.tif or .tiff), and Bitmap (.bmp). If you try to in sert a picture into your In sert ing Pic tures 15
presentation and PowerPoint gives you an error or asks you how to con vert it, you will need to find a program (such as GraphicConverter™ or Adobe Photoshop™) that can read that file type and cre ate files of one of the types that PowerPoint can read.
To in sert a picture from a file, choose “Pic ture” from the In sert menu and choose “From File . . . ” from the flyout menu (see Fig ure 2.2).
Figure 2.2. Choosing In sert Pic ture From File from the Menu
Although the dialog box you see will vary slightly de pending upon which ver - sion of PowerPoint you are using, it should look similar to the di alog box you see whenever you try to open a file on your computer. From this point, lo cate the file with the picture you want to insert and click on the “In sert” button.
While in serting a pic ture from a file has remained fairly con sistent from version to version of PowerPoint, in serting clip art has changed quite a bit. You start by choosing “Clip Art . . . ” from the flyout menu in stead of “From File . . . ” (see Fig ure 2.2). In PowerPoint 2002, you can search for clip art us ing the dialog shown in Fig ure 2.3, use the Clip Or ganizer, or search Microsoft’s fairly ex ten- sive col lection of clip art on the Web. From Microsoft’s Web col lection, you can download clip art into your own col lection so you can use it later without going to the Web.
Figure 2.3. In sert Clip Art in PowerPoint 2002
Another way to add graphics to your presentation is to copy and paste. Gen- erally, if you can see it on your computer you can copy it into your presentation. However, you must be careful; although you might be able to copy a picture into your pre sentation, you might not have the right to copy it into your pre sentation. Be sure to follow copyright law and guidelines, not ing that just because you don’t see a copyright symbol © does not mean that the picture or Web page is not copyrighted. While the fair use as pects of copyright law give you a great deal of free dom to use copy righted ma te rial for ed u ca tional pur poses, many re stric tions apply as to what you can use, how much you can use, and for how long you can use it. Your best bet is to use ma terial you have cre ated yourself, ma terial that is in the pub lic do main (see for example, http://www.pics4learning.com/), or ma- terial for which you have ob tained per mission to use. But if you must use copy - righted ma terial with out per mission, you should pay close at tention to the Fair Use Guide lines for Ed u ca tional Mul ti me dia (see http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/ intellectualproperty/ccmcguid.htm). While these guide lines are not the law, they are a good guide for your fair-use rights to use copyrighted material.
If you are on the Web and you see a picture that you want to use and you have the right to use it be cause of fair use, be cause the pic ture is in the pub lic do - main, or be cause you have per mission to use it, you can generally copy it into your PowerPoint presentation. If you are on a Macintosh, point your mouse to the picture you want to copy and hold the mouse but ton down un til you see a In sert ing Pic tures 17
menu that pops up. If you are on a Win dows computer, point your mouse to the picture and right click (that is, click the right mouse but ton; see Figure 2.4).
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.
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.
Figure 2.6. Re cord Sound Di alog Box