Hey, it's mike from TeachingWithVideo.com
The place to go to learn how to use
the power of video to engage persuade
and educate your audience. And in this
video, I'm going to show you how to make
better use of PowerPoint when creating
your instructional or educational videos.
You see, unfortunately, so many PowerPoint-
based videos look like this: narration over slide after
slide, crammed with bullet point, after bullet point.
Not terribly engaging, or effective as a teaching tool.
So, how do we fix this? How do we make
bullet points compelling? Well, by taking
advantage of one of PowerPoint's most
convenient, yet underused features. Let's
hop into PowerPoint and I'll show you
what I mean. So, here we are in PowerPoint.
So, we're going to take this typical
PowerPoint slide with a title and bullet points, and
turn it into something more visually and mentally engaging.
And to do that, we're going to select these
bullet points, and then we're going to go up to
the ribbon, and under the Paragraph
section, we're going to go to Convert to
SmartArt. Now, if you hover over the
button, you'll get this pop-up that says:
"SmartArt is a way for you to
communicate information visually rather
than with just text." So, we click the down
arrow, and we get this selection of diagrams.
Now, if you hover over a diagram, you get
a live preview of how your bullet points
will be transformed. These diagrams
represent different types of
relationships between the bullet points,
or the elements of your content. Now, if
you select more SmartArt graphics down
here, you'll get the entire library of
SmartArt diagrams. The diagrams are
grouped into different categories. So, you
have the List category, which you can use
to display grouped, or related, or
non sequential information. There is Process,
which you can use to show sequential
steps. Cycle, which you can use to show a
continuing sequence of stages, or
relationships to a central idea, like
this one, right here, which is pretty obvious.
And so on down the list. When you select
a graphic, you get this handy suggestion
of how to use it in this pane on the
right, here. Now, for our example, I'm going
to select the Matrix Category because I
think that best fits. And I'm just going
to choose the Basic Matrix. And our
bullet point text is transformed into a
much more visually engaging diagram. But
you don't have to settle for the default
diagram. SmartArt graphics are highly
customizable. If we select our SmartArt
diagram, you'll see we get this SmartArt
tools menu on the top ribbon. And if we
select the Design tab, we get all of
these tools we can use to change the
look of our SmartArt graphic. Over here,
we have SmartArt Styles, where we can
change the look and feel of our graphic
using a bunch of these presets. Hovering
over a preset gives you a live preview
of how your graphic will change. You can
change the color scheme of your graphic
by selecting from this palette of color
schemes. And again you get a live preview
of what your color scheme will look like
when you hover over a selection. Now, to
the left, you can change the layout of
your SmartArt graphic to another layout
within that category. So, in our instance,
we're in the matrix category, so we have
these choices. Or, you can hit this button
down here and get back to the SmartArt
library, where you can pick from the
entire selection of diagrams. The Create
Graphics section allows you to add text
to the SmartArt graphic, as well as add
more shapes. Now, if we go back up to the
ribbon and we select the Format tab
under SmartArt tools, we get a whole
bunch of tools to
change the look and feel of the
different shapes, the individual shapes
in your diagram. You can change the shape
of individual elements under the Change
Shape drop-down. If you hit that, you can
see all of these shapes that you can use
in your diagram. You can change the size
of the individual shapes. There's also a
selection of Shape Styles. You can drill
down and change the elements of shapes,
like the fill or the outline. You can
even add effects to the individual
shapes. Now, I'm not going to go into all
of the different customizations in this
video. But it's safe to say you can
really tune your SmartArt graphic to
look just the way you want it to. And let
me show you something else. You don't
need to have a slide with bullet points
to create a SmartArt diagram. You can
start with a blank slide. Then you just
go up to Insert on the top menu. Then
over to the Illustrations section and
select SmartArt. The SmartArt library
pops up and then you can select the
diagram you want to work with. And then
you select it and it's inserted onto
your slide. Then you can add your text,
modify it, change the colors, do all that
stuff. Now, I usually work this way for a
couple reasons when I'm using SmartArt.
First, it forces you to think about
your content visually, which is
what you should be doing when you're
making videos. And second, it forces you
to organize your information into an
effective structure. Structuring your
information and making it more visual
makes your content easier to understand
and remember. But there's one more thing
about SmartArt that makes it a
tremendous tool for video. You can
animate it, and it's really easy. All you
have to do is select your graphic and go
up and select Animations on the top
ribbon. Select an animation. I'll select
fade for this example. And it's applied
to your SmartArt graphic. Let's see how
this looks by going into slideshow mode.
I'll hit the Forward Arrow key on my
keyboard and our graphic appears. But
this doesn't really work for me. What I
want to do is build up the slide by
bringing on each element individually.
That way I can control the pace of the
information, so my viewer isn't
overwhelmed. So, we'll hit escape to get
back to the editing screen. And then I'll
go up to the ribbon and select Effects
Options, which is right beside the
animation panel. We drop that down and
we'll see we have a bunch of selections.
And the one I want is 'One by One.' This
will bring on each element of our
SmartArt graphics individually. And so I'll
select that. And then you'll see on the
left, here, that I now have five
animations on this slide. So let's
preview this in slideshow mode. Okay, I'll
hit the Forward Arrow key and my first
element appears. And I hit the key again
and my second element appears. And then
I can talk about that one for a bit. Then
hit the Forward Arrow key again and my
third element comes on. And I can talk
about that for a while. And so on, and so
on. So, using SmartArt and PowerPoint,
we've taken a somewhat basic, boring
slide with bullet points and turned it
into a much more engaging and
instructive motion graphic. And I just
barely scratched the surface of what's
possible with SmartArt animation in
PowerPoint. SmartArt is just one of many
powerful animation features right inside
of PowerPoint. How do you think you might
use SmartArt in your next PowerPoint-
based video. Let me know in the comments,
below. And if you'd like to see more
tutorials about how to use PowerPoint as
a video creation tool, let me know that
in the comments, too. And of course, if you
found this video useful, please give it a
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Thanks for watching. And I'll see you
next time.