Tech Tip #54: How to Auto Forward a PowerPoint Slideshow

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q:  My students are learning to use Powerpoint for presentations. They’ll stand in front of the class and the slideshow will play behind them. We want it to go automatically without requiring them to click the mouse or push the space bar. How do we do that?

A: Presentations are a great skill to teach students. I applaud you on this. Auto-forward isn’t difficult:

• go to Transition on the menu bar
• go to Timing on the right side
• Leave ‘on mouse click’ selected (in case you as the teacher need to move it forward automatically. I’ve had students mistakenly put five minutes on a slide instead of five seconds and we would sit waiting forever if I didn’t do the mouse click)
• set the timer to serve the needs of the slide. This will require students to practice before presenting so they can put the correct time in. A good default of 5-10 seconds.

Dear Otto: PowerPoint or Publisher?

Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Here’s a great question I got from Alex:

Hi! I know the difference between Power Point and Publisher. I focus on teaching Power Point, but maybe I should teach more of Publisher.  My question is should I stop teaching Power Point and only focus on Publisher?

Publisher and PowerPoint have two different focuses for student learning. Publisher teaches desktop publishing where PowerPoint focuses on presentations. Publisher enables students to provide evidence that they have thoroughly learned a topic (using text, images, graphic organizers) but doesn’t include the distractions (or enrichments) of sound, movement, audio. PowerPoint can include these to enhance a message, but risks obfuscating the true meaning by the multitude of media. This can distract from the authenticity of learning, enabling students to hide behind the bling, wow viewers with their artistry rather than their knowledge. You as teacher must decide which course is best for your purposes.

I get 2nd graders on Publisher with greeting cards, 3rd graders with a simple magazine, 4th graders with a trifold, and 5th graders with a newsletter. PowerPoint is a crowd please, one I teach only in 2nd and 3rd grade, at which point students know the basics and I turn the skill over to the class teacher with the knowledge they can expect students to create an effective slideshow.

#47: Tour the World—with a PowerPoint Slideshow

Use the research done for #40. Use a guidesheet to lay out what is on each slides, i.e., a cover, table of contents, what makes a geographic locations amazing (discuss this as a group), a map, and three locations from #40. Teach PowerPoint skills such as adding slides and text and pictures, animation, transitions, auto-forward, personalized backgrounds, adding music to multiple slides. Third graders may not be able to complete all skills.

Tech Tip #54: How to Auto Forward a PowerPoint Slideshow

from the classroom

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: My students are learning to use Powerpoint for presentations. They’ll stand in front of the class and the slideshow will play behind them. We want it to go automatically without requiring them to click the mouse or push the space bar. How do we do that?

A: Presentations are a great skill to teach students. I applaud you on this. Auto-forward isn’t difficult:

• go to Transition on the menu bar
• go to Timing on the right side
• Leave ‘on mouse click’ selected (in case you as the teacher need to move it forward automatically. I’ve had students mistakenly put five minutes on a slide instead of five seconds and we would sit waiting forever if I didn’t do the mouse click)
• set the timer to serve the needs of the slide. This will require students to practice before presenting so they can put the correct time in. A good default of 5-10 seconds.