Once you have collected all your multimedia elements together (text, graphics and audio), it must be put together into a format that will allow the viewer to work their way through the material. There is a range of multimedia software to help you in creating your multimedia presentation but these can be broken down into two classes of software, presentation packages and authoring packages.

Presentation Packages

Presentation packages were originally developed for business executives to produce slides for corporate presentations and handouts. These slides would mainly consist of text with the occasional picture for interest. These old presentation packages produced linear documents i.e. you could only view them in the order they were created.

Nowadays, presentation packages like Persuasion, Astound or PowerPoint can handle animations, video and audio, with the user able to interactively select what information they wish to view and in what order. As more and more features are added, there is little difference between a presentation package and an authoring package.

• Launch Microsoft Powerpoint

• At this stage we are only concerned with the process of creating Powerpoint slideshows

• Create 5 slides with the five different layouts

• Add animation and transition effects to each slide

• Investigate how to add media elements e.g. audio, animation and video

• Playback your presentation

Answer the following questions in your jotter.

1. Animations could be created in Powerpoint by creating a series of slides. Give one advantage and one disadvantage of using Powerpoint to create animations instead of Flash.
2. Describe three animation effects available in Powerpoint.
3. Describe three ways of advancing to the next slide in your presentation.
4. Why is it useful to be able to record timings for your presentations?
5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a presentation package to produce a multimedia presentation?