Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular, widely used, electronic substitute for the old visual aids like hand-drawn blackboards or whiteboards, or mechanically created slides, with overhead projectors. “PowerPoint was initially developed in 1984 by Forethought, Inc., Sunnyvale, California, for the Macintosh computer. In 1987, Forethought was bought by Microsoft and became Microsoft’s Graphics Business Unit, which continued to further develop the software.” (Microsoft powerpoint, 2009).
Beginning from the 1987 PowerPoint 1.0 for Mac OS classic version, Microsoft has managed to bring around more than fifteen versions into the market. Presently it is a part of the Microsoft Office suite. The Microsoft Office suite is developed to run on various Operating Systems like Microsoft Windows, the Mac OS, and Linux (with the help of Wine compatibility layer-Used for running windows application in Linux). The other applications that are available in the latest Microsoft Office suite include Microsoft office tools, Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Outlook with business contact manager, Microsoft Office Visio, Microsoft office publisher, Microsoft office Accounting express, etc.
Beginning with Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft had revised the brand name by calling it Microsoft Office PowerPoint instead of just Microsoft PowerPoint. The current versions available from Microsoft are Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (Windows OS) and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2008 (Mac OS). The latest version of the Microsoft Office system program is a 32-bit application and can run on a Windows 64-bit platform (Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista). The entire office suite requires a minimum of 500MHz processor with 256 MB RAM and 1.5GB hard disk. The coming version from Microsoft will be Microsoft Office 2009 (also known as Office 14). Also, free trials, latest upgrades, and customization options are available in Microsoft office online.
Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation tool which helps the users to create efficient, professional, dynamic presentations. The latest versions are so professional that they integrate workflows and provide a medium to share information easily. This popular presentation software has a wide range of users like business people, students, and educators. In corporate businesses it is often used to create professional presentations and publicity presentations, in order to communicate with the clients and also for the internal communication among the different levels of workflow of the organization. Students and tutors use this wonderful presentation tool for creating training materials, status reports on training classes etc.
PowerPoint presentation consists of a number of individual pages or slides, which in turn may contain text, graphics, and multimedia files.The presentation can be made more interesting by adding the various animation options present. It can apply a consistent style for a presentation using a template(Slide Master). The presentation can either be displayed on a computer or the user can take print-outs of the presentation. The same can also be projected over a screen addressing a wide range of audience, using a video projector.Other types of Presentation equipments include digital projectors, light pens, smart boards etc.Although the most well known presentation program is Microsoft PowerPoint, there are alternatives such as OpenOffice.org Impress, Keynote from Apple, Adobe Acrobat etc.
A picture is worth a thousand words:- This saying is particularly true for PowerPoint as it is capable of transmitting the information directly to the brains of the audience. As a tutor myself have some experiences with the amazing benefits of the software.We were in charge of an awareness programme among the students.The whole school has to be addressed and we chose Microsoft powerpoint slides for the presentation. The response from the children was amazing as it was planned to be an interactive session. In my assessment, the ease of use and the relatively less learning-effort refers to the popularity of the software.
The simplicity of presentation software can save a lot of time thereby increasing the productivity.At the same time it can effectively convey the contents of the presentation to the audience through the various inbuilt features available (namely use of the movies and voice files and animation optiions). The latest versions already have efficient tools for business presentations. It will be more beneficial to have more templates like calenders, year planners, event management tools integrated to the current version. It is evident from the widespread use of the software that it is a powerful and flexible tool than any of the alternatives available.
It serves as a motivational tool for learning and encourages the learning interests of the audience.A professionally created and effectively presented PowerPoint presentation can make wonders in the perspectives of both presenters and audience.
References
Microsoft office online. (2009). Microsoft. Web.
Microsoft powerpoint. (2009). Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Web.
PC World Magazine. Web.