PowerPoint

Ok, for those of you who have been following me from the start or have gone back and read the posts I wrote earlier I have news.

For those of you who are new to my blog here's a short re-cap.

I AM NOT A TECHIE. I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO LEANINGS TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY OR HOW TO APPLY IT.

That being said I have been attempting (with many failures and quite a bit a comic relief along to way) to stumble into the 21st century. (Ok, I admit it, some of it hasn't been stumbling...some of it I have been dragged kicking and screaming into.)

I now can fake my way through Twitter, can Facebook with some assurance, I skype to some small degreee, and I can now (drum roll please) do a presentation on PowerPoint.

Right now I am visualizing most of you shaking your heads and/or raising your eyebrows...what? you ask...she didn't know how to use PowerPoint? Where has she been under a rock?

Not exactly...just in Galt, CA.

But I digress.

I had no need of it. I had quit teaching. I was not working as a lecturer/teacher in Genealogy, I was doing research. But about a month ago my local Family History Center asked me if I would teach a class, so I took a deep breath, and admitting nothing, said yes.

Let me tell you something. (For those of you on the same Non-Techie cruise ship I'm on) PowerPoint was a breeze to learn. I just had to get over my fear and preconceived notions that it would be hard. (That's always the hardest part anyway, right?)

One of my slides

Being the procrastinator that I am, and with everyone assuring me PowerPoint was easy, I put off doing the work until after I came home from NGS, which left me about 3 days to prepare. (I see those raised eyebrows again.) Yes, putting together an hour's presentation took me about 30 hours to prepare but not because the program was hard to learn. It took me 30 hours because it was FUN. I had fun picking out the pictures I wanted to use and the design of it. Although I knew what I was going to say in the lecture I still had to put it in order (think create an outline) so my slides would follow along with what I was saying. And I needed to find examples of the ideas I was trying to get across. At the completion I ended up with 41 slides. Wow, I didn't think I had that much to say.

The lecture went well, the only problem was when I got a notification that I was about to lose power. Luckily there were people present who are more tech savvy then me and they determined that the power cord was at fault and changed out the cord. (I would have panicked but thanks to my husband and one of the organizers I was able to just keep yapping away until I could move on to the next slide. Thanks guys.)

So I guess I really learned two things...how to use PowerPoint and to always have a techie with me to fix the little glitches...glad I married one.