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www.office.com/setup Blogs: Sway: Microsoft Office presentation software. PowerPoint: Microsoft Office presentation software. So what's the difference? You're watching Jeopardy! when the presenter utters the following answer in keeping with the game show's famous format: "A software tool from Microsoft for creating presentations, web-based reports and projects." Quick as a flash you spit out the question in unison with the contestant: "What is PowerPoint?" To your astonishment, presenter Alex Trebek shakes his head and utters a curt "No". The correct question was "What is Sway?" To the best of our knowledge, that scenario has yet to surface on the American quiz show, but it's hypothetically possible. After all, there are a number of similarities between PowerPoint and Sway on first inspection: Both are part of Microsoft Office Both can be used to create rich presentations Both support multimedia including video, audio and images Both feature customisable templates There's no disputing that there are areas where PowerPoint and Sway overlap. But if you're thinking Sway is just a web-based clone of PowerPoint, think again - each piece of software has highly specific functions. It's well worth familiarising yourself with the differences between the two, cos if you Sway when you're meant to PowerPoint, you're gonna have a bad time. POWERPOINT IN A PARAGRAPH As the world's preeminent slideshow software, PowerPoint requires no introduction. From classroom projects to delivering keynote addresses, Microsoft's easy to use presentation software has graced overhead projectors on every continent. Slides; audience handouts; speaker's notes. Whatever you choose to create and however you choose to deliver your story, PowerPoint makes it simple. SWAY IN SUMMARY Sway is an online presentation and storytelling app that's free for anyone with a Microsoft or Office 365 account. The newest addition to Microsoft Office, Sway helps

www.office.com/setup Blogs: The OneNote API team is pleased to announce that we have enabled application-level permissions support for the OneNote API. Until now, OneNote API calls could only be made with user-delegated permissions. This meant that your application would be restricted to scenarios that required a user to be signed in. With application-level permissions support, your application now supports scenarios that do not require a user to be signed in! Read the MSDN article for details of the OneNote API application-level permissions support. With the availability of OneNote API application-level permissions support, many new scenarios that weren't possible earlier are now enabled. Some example scenarios include: Analytics (based on OneNote metadata and content exposed by the OneNote API). Dashboards (based on OneNote metadata and content exposed by the OneNote API). Background provisioning of OneNote content. Background update of OneNote content. During the development process of building the new application-level permissions support for OneNote API, our Product Management and Engineering teams worked closely with third-party partners to ensure that relevant and key education scenarios were implemented. We also ensured that our API would work well with new and upcoming third-party solutions. One of these education companies we worked closely with during the API development was Hapara. "The Hapara Dashboard provides educators with a bird's-eye view into student work across the Office 365 platform. With Dashboard, educators view and access student work from OneDrive and OneNote Class Notebooks from a central hub, making it easier to engage with students and their work across the Office 365 platform. Hapara relies on the new OneNote API to help co-teachers, counselors, coaches and school administrators gain appropriate access to student work in any classroom, something that previously required manual sharing and significant administrative effort by th

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: START THE SHOW INSTANTLY We've all seen too much of presenter's laptop screens, full of messy icon-strewn desktops or unread emails, as they try to start a PowerPoint presentation. Get right to it by naming the file with a .PPS (or .PPSX) file extension. That's a PowerPoint Show, and a quick double click on it goes right into the slideshow, not PowerPoint editing mode. Click Esc to exit the slideshow. www.office.com/setup Blogs: There comes a time in almost every young (or old) office worker's life where the cubicle must give way to the boardroom, or worse, to the dais. That means speaking in public, and more often than not, that speaking is usually accompanied by slides. Such presentations are ingrained in the public consciousness, from watching big-name CEOs spew speeds-and-feeds about new gadgets, to fascinating TED talks on every topic under the sun. Even teachers in the classroom give lessons in a way the old blackboard could never convey. It's fair to say that the vast majority of those presentations are created using PowerPoint, the presentation tool that's a staple of the Microsoft Office suite. The site SlideNirvana.com estimates that PowerPoint is on at least 1 billion (with a B!) computers worldwide. If even a third of them use the software, that's still the equivalent of the entire population of the United States making slide-based exhibitions. And most of them suck. Perhaps that's not quantifiable, but so many articles are written on that fact-and so many of us live through them-it's hard to argue the (power)point. Likewise, many, many articles and entire books are written on how to make effective presentations. This is not one of those stories. This collection of tips is all about the vagaries of the powerful PowerPoint software itself. It's meant for those with a grasp of the basics and beyond who are looking for that extra little goose to get the most out of the program. We hope with these tricks-some of which wi

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: SIMPLE RULES FOR BETTER POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS www.office.com/setup Blogs: Have you ever given a PowerPoint presentation and noticed that something about it just seemed a little … off? If you're unfamiliar with basic PowerPoint design principles, it can be difficult to create a slide show that presents your information in the best light. Poorly designed presentations can leave an audience feeling confused, bored, and even irritated. Review these tips on making your next presentation more engaging. DON'T READ YOUR PRESENTATION STRAIGHT FROM THE SLIDES If your audience can both read and hear, it's a waste of time for you to simply read your slides aloud. Your audience will zone out and stop listening to what you're saying, which means they won't hear any extra information you include. Instead of typing out your entire presentation, include only main ideas, keywords, and talking points in your slide show text. Engage your audience by sharing the details out loud. FOLLOW THE 5/5/5 RULE To keep your audience from feeling overwhelmed, you should keep the text on each slide short and to the point. Some experts suggest using the 5/5/5 rule: no more than five words per line of text, five lines of text per slide, or five text-heavy slides in a row. Screenshot of Microsoft PowerPoint DON'T FORGET YOUR AUDIENCE Who will be watching your presentation? The same goofy effects and funny clip art that would entertain a classroom full of middle-school students might make you look unprofessional in front of business colleagues and clients. Humor can lighten up a presentation, but if you use it inappropriately your audience might think you don't know what you're doing. Know your audience, and tailor your presentation to their tastes and expectations. CHOOSE READABLE COLORS AND FONTS Your text should be easy to read and pleasant to look at. Large, simple fonts and theme colors are always your best bet. The best fonts and colors can va

A teacher would never be satisfied with her performance if she discovered that the entire back row of her classroom was unable to hear her lecture. In the world of cloud services for business, we see things the same way. With Office 365, every user counts! Google has a different approach. It starts counting downtime only after at least 5 percent of users are affected. Imagine if 100 of your 2,000 users had no access to email. Would you, as an IT professional, be satisfied with your performance? Would your business hold you accountable for your performance? The answers to these questions are clear. Calculating downtime only after 5 percent of your users cannot access email, as Google does, makes it more difficult for you to assess impact to user productivity. Google's approach doesn't help your business with meaningful performance metrics.

Discovery Education's Puzzlemaker provides teachers, students, and parents, the tools necessary to create crossword, puzzles, word search puzzles, mazes and more online!

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators is a categorized list of sites useful for enhancing curriculum and professional growth. It is updated often to include the best sites for teaching and learning.