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An article in this space a few weeks ago about how to present ideas to large groups has engendered several questions from teachers. As they prepared their PowerPoint slide shows and displayed them before the audience, they encountered some interesting opportunities. This week's article takes their questions one by one, and provides some practical information for improving educational presentations.

Can I put sounds onto a PowerPoint slide?

Yes, of course you can, but it requires a bit of preparation. You add a sound to a slide in the same way you add any other object, by choosing Insert --> Movies and Sounds from the menubar. From there you can insert a sound from a file, one that you previously saved to your computer; or a sound from the Office Gallery of sounds, an audio clip art collection.

If you want to insert a sound from a file, the file must be in a sound format that PowerPoint can use. PowerPoint can take sounds (including voice, music, and effects) in the .mov, .wav, .au, and .aif file formats, but has trouble with sounds in the .ram, .aac, and other formats designed for online streaming or copy-protection. Later in this article you'll learn how to find the right kinds of sound files.

To use the Microsoft Clip Gallery of sounds that came with the Office software, the sounds must be installed. To see if they are, choose Insert --> Movies and Sounds --> Sound from Gallery, and see if any sounds are listed in the window. If no sounds are found, you need to install the clip gallery sounds, which you can find on the Microsoft Office installer CD.

For Macintosh users only, you have an additional way to insert sounds onto a slide. Choose Insert --> Movies and Sounds --> Record sound from the menubar. You'll be able to speak, as if into a tape recorder, and whatever you record is added to the slide.

No matter how you get the sound onto the slide, it will show as a small speaker icon. PowerPoint will ask you if you want the sound to play automatically when the slide appears, or wait for you to click its icon. You may drag the icon to locate it anywhere on the slide. To hear the sound, view the slide show, and if necessary click the sound's icon.

Don't forget the speakers -- you won't hear the sounds from your PowerPoint show unless there are speakers or headphones connected to your computer. My colleague in the next room, for example, has no sound capability on his computer, and thus his PowerPoint (and everything else) is silent no matter how many sounds he inserts.

Where do I get sounds?

A good and easy-to-use source for sounds is a CD full of sound clips, such as Concept:FX. Insert the CD into your drive, then from PowerPoint choose Insert ---> Movies and Sounds ---> Sound from File, and then navigate to the CD. Here you will find folders full of files that contain sound clips.

Another source of sounds is the Clip Gallery provided with the Office software, described above. You may also record your own sounds, using the Sound Recorder accessory. Save the recording to your hard drive, and then insert it into PowerPoint as described above.

Can I take sounds from the Web?

Yes, but they must be in the right format. Many of the sounds on the Web are not meant to be copied, and thus cannot be used in your PowerPoint slide show. Most sounds in the RealPlayer and Windows Media format cannot be downloaded from the Web to your hard disk, and thus cannot be used in your presentation. What you need to find are sounds in a downloadable and usable file format, such as .mov, .aif, and .wav.

You may find some downloadable sounds, that will work in PowerPoint, at the Partners in Rhyme web site. Here you will find a wide variety of sounds in formats that can be downloaded to your computer, and then inserted into PowerPoint.

Can I put pictures from my digital camera into PowerPoint?

Yes, but be careful -- many of the newer cameras make pictures that are too large to fit comfortably into PowerPoint. To see how this works with your camera, first download the pictures from your camera to the computer, using the software provided with the camera. Then go to PowerPoint, and insert one of these pictures by choosing Insert --> Picture --> Picture from File from the menubar. Navigate to one of the picture files you just downloaded, and insert it onto the slide.

If the picture more than fills the screen, that means your camera is producing very high-resolution images. It's best not to use these in PowerPoint -- they take up lots of memory and disk space, and make your slide show so large in file size that it's difficult to share with others. And don't simply insert the huge picture and then reduce its size in PowerPoint -- this may look OK on the screen, but does not solve the memory problem caused by all the megapixels in the image.

Instead, if your pictures are too big, adjust the settings on the camera to take smaller pictures. Set the resolution to 640 x 480 or 800 x 600 pixels, and your pictures will be more appropriate to PowerPoint. Take a few of these lower-resolution pictures, download them to your computer, and insert them into PowerPoint to see how much better they work.

How do I put pictures from the Web into PowerPoint?

This is easy. Here are two quick methods for getting images from Web sites into PowerPoint:

• Drag and drop. Open your Web browser in one window, and your PowerPoint slide show in another. (For advice on managing multiple windows, see Doing Windows in this series.) Locate the image you need. (Google has a good image index -- click the images tab on Google's front page.) Now simply click and drag the image from the Web page to the PowerPoint slide, and drop it (unclick). Once it's on the slide, you can move it (by dragging) or adjust its size (by dragging the little white square handles around the edge).
  
• Copy and paste. Locate the image you need from the Web. Right-click (Windows) or control +click (Macintosh) on the image. From the popup menu that appears, choose Copy image. Now go to your PowerPoint slide, and choose Edit --> Paste from the menubar. You can move or adjust this image as described above.

Remember that these images do not belong to you. While for most school projects neither you nor your students need permission to use them in this way, it's nonetheless a good idea to keep track of where you got each picture, and to cite your online sources in the PowerPoint slide show. (For more on Fair Use see in Internet Smarts on this web)

Can I automatically insert a series of pictures from my camera into PowerPoint to make a slide show?

No, you cannot automate the importing of pictures into PowerPoint. But there's another way to create a quick slide show from the pictures in your camera. Use QuickTime Pro, which has a very simple "Open Image Sequence" command under the file menu. You can get QuickTime Pro for $29 at http://quicktime.apple.com