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PowerPoint II—to the Web

There are several ways to give your students access to a PowerPoint presentation. In this workshop, we’ll experiment with three different methods and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Connect to your website

  1. launch WebDrive to connect to your Crab account
  2. Site Name: Crab; Site Address: crab.rutgers.edu
  3. ensure that “Anonymous/Public Logon” is not checked
  4. click “Connect” and log in, then minimize the Crab window
  5. Launch Mozilla and from the File menu and click the Composer button at bottom left
    1. if you have a webpage, choose Open File from the File menu and select your index.htm file from public_html
    2. if you have never created a webpage, select New , then Composer Page. Type your name and then choose Save from the File menu. Name your file “index” and save to your public_html folder on Crab

Open your PowerPoint presentation

  1. launch PowerPoint
  2. from the File menu, select Open
  3. navigate to the floppy disk (or other location) where your file is stored
  4. double-click on the “PowerPoint2” (or your own) file

Posting the full presentation file (.ppt)

Strengths: This is the simplest way to offer your presentation and it allows students the greatest options for viewing and printing the material. NOTE: Your students will be given a choice to Open or Save the file—saving gives the greatest options for viewing and printing.

Weaknesses: Some faculty members are concerned about “giving away” their presentations. Students will see any speaker notes you have attached to the slides (may be a good thing). Students can easily save and make changes to these files. IMPORTANT: Some students may not have the PowerPoint program on their personal computers. These students may be unable to open the file unless they download the free “PowerPoint Viewer 2003,” available from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads. You should post this download info to your students.

How to:

  1. from within our sample file in PowerPoint, choose “Save As” from the File menu
  2. navigate to your “public_html” folder on crab
  3. name the file without spaces, such as “PowerPoint2-full”
  4. return to Composer and type “click to view PowerPoint2 full presentation” then create a hyperlink to the PowerPoint2 file
  5. launch Internet Explorer and type in your personal web address, i.e., http://crab.rutgers.edu/~yourNetID; then click your new link

Saving your presentation as a webpage (.htm)

Strengths: This may be the simplest version for your students, as they will not need a separate “reader” program. You can choose whether to publish speaker notes or not.

Weaknesses: Limited printing options. May not look as good from browsers other than IE.

How to:

  1. from within our sample file in PowerPoint, choose “Save as Web Page” from the File menu
  2. navigate to your “public_html” folder on crab
  3. name the file without spaces, such as “PowerPoint2-web”
  4. click the Publish button for more options
    1. you can choose a subset of slides or the complete presentation
    2. choose to publish speaker notes or not
    3. change title for webpage if needed
    4. click Publish
      Note: this will create the .htm file, plus a folder of associated files
  5. from your webpage, add a link to this version: “click to view PowerPoint web presentation”
  6. test the link from IE

Converting your presentation to Acrobat format (.pdf)

Creating Acrobat documents requires the full Acrobat software package. Most of us are familiar with Acrobat Reader, which is a free download. Acrobat 7.0 should cost somewhere around $50 from http://software.rutgers.edu. It may be worth purchasing if you routinely post highly-formatted documents on your website.

Strengths: Many people already have Acrobat Reader installed. PDF files are less susceptible to viruses and are smaller files (up to 90% smaller than a .ppt) which means quicker downloads.

Weaknesses: You may need to purchase Acrobat 7.0 to create .pdf’s. Fewer printing options.

How to:

  1. from within our sample file in PowerPoint, select “Convert to Adobe PDF” from the Adobe PDF menu (only available if Acrobat is installed)
  2. save .pdf to public_html folder on Crab
  3. from your webpage, add a link to this version: “click to view PowerPoint PDF presentation”
  4. test the link from IE