Assignment 6.1 – PowerPoint

INSTRUCTIONS:

Part 1: Your astronomy class is studying the solar system, and you have been assigned the topic of the Mars Curiosity rover and its exploration of that planet. You have learned that the rover was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on November 26, 2011, and landed in the Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012. The mission was scheduled to last two years and had the major goal of assessing whether Mars was or is capable of supporting life. The Curiosity rover is the size of a car and has a MastCam equipped with two camera systems to take photos of the landscape as it maneuvers around the rocky surface. The rover also can scoop up samples of the Martian soil, fire a laser at rocks as far away as nine feet (2.7 meters), and make weather station readings. Use the concepts and techniques you learned in the chapter to create a PowerPoint presentation with a suitable theme, a title slide, and three text slides with bulleted lists. Add pictures from Office.com and apply a transition. Submit your assignment in the format specified by your instructor.

Part 2: You made several decisions while creating the presentation in this assignment: what theme to use, where to place text, how to format the text (font, font size, paragraph alignment, bulleted para- graphs, italics, bold, color). You also decided which graphical images to use, where to position the graphical images, if a closing slide would be useful, and which transition would be most effective. What was the rationale behind each of these decisions? When you proofed the document, what further revisions did you make and why? Where would you recommend showing this slide show?

Curiosity Rover Presentation

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Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to write about my experience that I had when I was making a presentation about a topic assigned to me utilizing the Power Point Application of the Microsoft Office Software Suit. This was a profound experience where I had to make different decision about choosing different templates, different images, different font sizes and giving an overall shape to my presentation. An account of my experience is provided in this paper.

Choosing a Power Point Theme

Research has suggested that the theme of the Power Point presentations have a correlation with the learning experience of students (Bartsch & Cobern, 2003). Researcher used the same lecture material in two different themed Power Point presentations and found out that the difference in themes had impacted the learning experience of the students who were part of the experiment. Keeping this in mind, I also was looking at different themes and was thinking about which theme to use. When I looked at the “Droplet” theme, it remind me of the astronauts playing with water in the outer space where gravity is minimal. That is why I chose this theme to remind the viewers of space. Then I wanted to choose a variant of the theme. I chose a reddish variant of the Droplet theme. I chose the reddish variant as Mars is called “red planet” so the color goes with the description of the planet that the Curiosity Rover is exploring. So now when I look at the presentation, the overall theme is set to remind us of space and Mars. I believe that as everyone that will see this presentation as an audience would be aware that I am talking about Curiosity exploring Mars, the theme would definitely have an unconscious impact on their interest level that I need for them to enjoy the presentation.

Font size, style and color

Font is an important factor that should be kept in mind when designing a Power Point presentation. Research suggests that time must be spent on choosing a font style for a presentation as it could influence the attention level of the audience, especially students (Collins, 2004). Tw Cen MT is the default font style in Droplet theme. I tried different other fonts like Time New Romans and Ariel etc. but to be very honest I didn’t like them with this theme. They did not go in a constant flow with the background of the presentation. In my opinion the designers of the themes for Power Point research all aspects of the themes they are developing and special consideration would have been given to set a default font for it. So I left it as it was. Next was the choice of a font color, I think that it was wise to choose black color as it is more prominent with a reddish background. I had to change the size of the font according to the need of each slide. For example when I would put an image on a slide and it would hide some text behind it, I would resize both the image and the font size to make it good on my eyes.

Another thing that I like about the theme I chose is that all the font on each slide is capitalized. This gives me a peace of mind to focus on other parts of the presentation instead of thinking about what word or phrase should be capitalized and which should not be capitalized.

Transition

I have used the Airplane transition on all my slides. We are talking about a space mission flying away all the way to Mars, so this transition has a great look and feel. When I move from one to another slide, the plane appears and flies away.

Images

Three of the images that I have used are related to Curiosity Rover. Two of the images are related to the exploration of other planets. In one of the images, Curiosity is throwing a beam of laser at a rock on Mars. I have mentioned the names of the image owners with the images to avoid any copy right issue.

Conclusion

I would again say that it was a profound experience. I was able to brainstorm about developing a Power Point presentation. I have developed presentations before as will but when you know that you have to write about your experience of developing the presentation with Power Point, the process becomes more attractive and full of learning.

Utilizing the PowerPoint Application

Assignment 6.1 – PowerPoint

Introduction

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