Animations in PowerPoint

powerpoint
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Each response needs to be 150 words.
Response 1 Bigler
I LOVE using animations in PowerPoint. I find they can really keep the flow of a presentation and keep the audience’s interest really well. I find myself using a lot of entrances, especially when there is a lot that is going to go onto any given slide. When there might be a great deal of information to take in, using entrances helps the audience to stay on topic at your pace so they can focus on one bit of information at a time. I think the secret to finding a balance between the animations adding or distracting is to use animations in a calm or subtle way. The free form tool for movement is fun, but a graphic or text box flying around usually isn’t helping people to hear you. However, if you have pertinent sections of text or relevant statistics fade in or even fly in, it can help introduce them in a memorable way. I rarely use exits because I like to wrap up each slide with all of the content visible.
I have had problems with big media files before. I like to record audio narration, but adding even a 10 or 15 second clip to each slide can make the file enormous by the end. What I have done to deal with this is do file sharing through websites that have fewer restrictions, since most free email services have a cap for attachment size. This week, l learned about the ‘bookmark’ feature for animation which I am excited to try. Previously, what I wanted to have was text appearing on the screen in time with my narration, but in order to accomplish that I had to listen to the audio clips and then set a delay for the start of the animation for each object to try to match it. It was cumbersome and only marginally effective. I’m hoping with the bookmark tool to be able to just have the text appear with a bookmark that I set.
Response 2 William
Personally, I’m not a fan of using animations in PowerPoint because I consider them cheesy and cheapen your presentation. That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for them in presentations but I find it really challenging to make it effective in delivering information. I prefer using photos and graphs; things of that nature. Balance must be established just by looking at the information you are presenting and also how you want to present it. Audience has to play a major role. For example, if you’re presenting to children the use of pictures and animations would have to be more frequent. In contrast, if you’re presenting to a more mature audience, the use of animations would go down.
The problems with media files and pictures can be alignment, size, and of course the placement in the actual presentation. With alignment, PowerPoint does have an Align tab that assists in being accurate with your placement. Size can be adjusted to complement the amount of text you may have on that screen. Correct placement depends on what you’re trying to convey with your image and how it relates to the information on the slide.
Tools that assist in creating an effective layout can include arranging, resizing, stretching, or changing margins. Grouping can be extremely handy if you have a pictures that have already been aligned a certain way. By grouping photos or objects you can retain that alignment and save time. The difference between linking and embedding is the option for the file to be updated when you make a change in the source file. Linking a file allows you to do this while an embedded file will not reflect changes made in the original source file. You would have to go in and manually change information for a file like that.