Getting the best from PowerPoint: 2 and 3 dimensional animations

PowerPoint is a package that many academics and teachers use routinely in teaching and research; the days of presentations being in the form of carousels loaded with slides are a distant memory for most. PowerPoint offers clear advantages over traditional slides in that presentations can be carried on a laptop or other portable media such as a CD or USB key and even with a relatively basic understanding of the package, professional looking slides can be rapidly produced. Yet in common with many software packages, the majority of us will only ever use a small percentage of the full functionality of the package. PowerPoint offers another significant advantage over traditional slides in that the presentation does not need to be „static‟ if the animation tools are utilised or an embedded video clip is inserted into the presentation. Here I present an overview of the animation of text and objects. A useful resource for those new to PowerPoint animations is provided by Murphy (2004) who presents a series of general hints and tips for embedding video, audio and animations into PowerPoint.