|
Presentation Broadcast is a nifty PowerPoint feature that lets you show a presentation over the Internet — that is, other Internet users can tune in to watch your presentation.
And the best part is, they don't even have to have PowerPoint to watch; any old Web browser will do. (Well, really old Web browsers won't work. Presentation Broadcasts are best viewed with Internet Explorer 5.1 or later.)
When you broadcast a presentation, the viewers can see the presentation's slides along with a table of contents that lets them click to move forward or backward through the presentation. In addition, viewers can hear your voice or see your picture if your computer has a microphone and a camera.
Here's what you need to broadcast a presentation:
- A presentation interesting enough to broadcast to someone who cares, who can't just walk across the hall to watch the presentation on your computer. This may seem like an obvious point, but sometimes people get so wrapped up in technology that they forget the simple solutions. Presentation broadcast is too much fuss to use unless you really need it.
- A high-speed Internet connection, such as ISDN, DSL, Cable, or some such. Avoid using presentation broadcast with a dial-up connection.
- A microphone and video camera if you want to broadcast your voice or picture.
- A server computer that can host your broadcast unless only one or two people will view your presentation. If more than ten people will view your presentation, the server should run Windows Media Server software. (If you're sharing a presentation from your own computer, you must first save the presentation to a shared folder.)
To set up a Presentation Broadcast, choose Slide
Show-->Online Broadcast-->Settings command to summon the Broadcast Settings dialog box, pictured in Figure 1. Use this dialog box to set options such as whether your presentation will include audio and video and what kind of server to use.
 |
Figure 1: The Broadcast Settings dialog box. |
To start an online presentation, choose the Slide
Show-->Online Broadcast-->Start Live Broadcast Now command. This summons a dialog box on which you can indicate the title and subject of your presentation, who will be making the presentation, and who should be invited to the broadcast. You can then proceed with the broadcast.
|
