Creating your First Presentation

In this video, we will be talking about creating your very first presentation. We will go over basic navigation to a new presentation, creating new content and finally going over the tools available.  

Create new Presentation, give it a title, then click on the Editor button. This will open up the Slide Editor. There are 3 main sections to the Slide Editor. The Left, Top and Right menus. On the left, we have all of the info about slides and preview images for them. On the Top, there are a variety of content creating buttons and other menus we can bring up. On the Right, if we had any content selected or menu pulled up, we would have the info panel. We'll talk about that more later.

Let's start by adding some content. Let's add a piece of text. Head to the top bar and hover over the icons, eventually you'll see one called "Text". Click it to create some text. On the right side, we can now see the info panel appearing. Use this panel to change Alignment, Color, Font Size and much more. 

Introduction

When a post is ready to be published, there are some final settings to consider at the bottom of the Create A Post view.

Privacy

When you publish a post, you have options for who will see the post. The default setting is usually School.

Project: Students explicitly listed as members of that Project.

Studio: Any student enrolled in your Studio.

School: Any student enrolled in the School.

Public: Visible to anyone who visits the link, no login required.

Comments

You can allow or disallow Comments on your posts by clicking the radio button. Any students enrolled in your Studio, along with Faculty and Staff, will be able to comment on a post. The default setting is Allow.

Notify Participants

Checking this radio button sends an email alert to everyone in the Studio or everyone in the Project, depending on where the post is located. 

Publish

At the bottom of the Create a Post window, you have three options:

Cancel

Cancels your draft post. No work is saved or preserved.

Save

Saves your post as a Draft. This Draft is only visible to you. If you add a collaborator to a draft post, they will be able to see it as well.

Posts that have been Saved as drafts appear only as a black title - no body of the post will be visible. Saved posts may also appear as Untitled Post in grey, if you did not title the post before Saving. Click the gear icon next to the title to edit this post or Publish.

Publish 

Publishes your post to the site. Post is visible to the user group defined under the Privacy setting. 

Refer to our Video Tutorials to learn more

Different types of Slide Editor Content

There are 6 main types of content in the Slide Editor. They are: Shapes, Images/Videos, Text, Embeds, Lines and Grids. Each of these are highlighted in a picture above. All of the content shares some basic properties such as: Top, Left, Width and other dimensional data. This controls where the item is placed on the canvas and how big it is. 

For each item, explore the unique settings they contain. You can link items to images, change the background color of Grids, even alter the styling of lines all from the item panel. Check it out in the editor for the best experience.

Introduction

While it is much more convenient to create content inside the NuVu Slide Editor, sometimes work from other websites (such as Google slides) needs to be shown. Using the embed feature, we can easily add content from these websites.

If you're working out of google slides, follow these steps.

1. Head to google slides, open up the presentation you'd like to embed
2. Click on Share in the top right of your presentation
3. Click on Get Link and change the share settings to Anyone with the link can view
4. Click Copy Link and head back to the NuVu Website
5. Congrats! From here we will head to the next section which covers embedding in depth

1. After clicking "Create a Post", find the button labeled Embed. This will open up a new text box to enter a url 
2. Take your public Google Slides link from earlier and paste it into the newly appeared text box
3. Click Embed, if done successfully, your presentation will now appear. Otherwise, you will be given a "Invalid Url" error. Try to follow the steps in the Preparing Your Content section again, not setting your presentation to public is the most common problem when following this process

Platform Collaboration

Often times when you're in a studio, you have a partner. A few questions arise: Who is going to post our work? Can we work on a post together? These questions can be answered by talking about the collaboration features on the Platform. Go to any post you've created and click on the gear in the top right. Go down to the bottom option in the drop down menu: Collaborators. From here, you can manage your Collaborators on your post. You can add and remove people from this list. Once added, that user will have editing privileges on your post. They can edit the post name, the body text and even the presentation. Be careful about editing at the same time. The last person to click "publish" after editing a post will override the content. See the video above for an example of this.

Navigation Bar

Below the slide window, there is a bar with features that help you navigate through your slide deck.

Slide Grid

Click on the Slide Grid icon. The Slide space will now display thumbnail images of all slides in your deck.

Rearrange Slides

You can rearrange slides in the Slide Editor Tool. Click the pencil on paper button in the bottom right corner of the editor to open up your presentation in the Slide Editor. For more information about the slide editor tool, please see our other tutorials. 

Caption Box

A caption can be added to every slide in the Caption Box. Only the first 120 characters of a caption are visible on a published post, so be brief. 

Simply click in the Add Caption prompt area and add your text. Click Save Caption to finish.

Tip: Can’t see captions below your slides? This is probably because your browser window is too narrow. Maximize the browser window and they should be visible. 

Tip: Can’t see captions below your slides? This option is not available on a Slide Editor presentation slide.

Introduction

Modifications to an existing Saved or Published post can be made by clicking the gear icon at the top right of the post. If no gear icon is visible, you do not have permissions to edit the post. 

Edit Post

You can edit a Saved or Published post by clicking on the gear icon and selecting Edit Post.

Delete Post

Deletes selected post from the site. If copies of the post exist elsewhere on the platform, they will be preserved.

Copy Post

You can copy this post to any location on the site where you have permission to create content. 

Click the Paste button (to the right of the Create a Post prompt bar) in the tab where you would like to place the copied post.

Collaborators

You can add Student collaborators to any post that you make. Adding another user as a collaborator means that they will be able to edit the post, and that the post will appear on their User Profile page. 

Note that only one user can edit a post at a time. Coordinate with your collaborators to ensure that you are not attempting to edit a post at the same time. 

Additional Info

If your post includes a presentation, a few more options are available.

Edit Presentation

Clicking Edit Presentation will take you directly to the slide editor. 

Export Presentation

Clicking Export Presentation will start a download for the selected presentation on your computer. Each slide will be exported into its own JPEG file with an encompassing folder for all the slides. 

Delete Presentation

Clicking Delete Presentation will delete the currently selected presentation. This is a permanent action and should be used sparingly. 

Toggle Header

Clicking Toggle Header will change the formatting at the top of a presentation. With a Header on, information such as: Profile Picture, Name, Date and Privacy settings are shown at the top of a presentation. With a Header off, all information shown with the header on will be hidden. The only information shown will be the name of the post.

The Basics of the Slide Editor

The Slide Editor is a powerful tool used to create and edit presentations. It can be reached through the Editor Button when making a new post, or by clicking the gear above a post, then selecting Edit Presentation, if a post already has a presentation. When the tool opens, on the left hand side of the screen there will be a variety of tools. Hovering over a tool will highlight it and show the name. 

I like that the model includes both a train and the environment. Great work with the use of 3D software and 3D printing is great, but I feel the research and sketching phase could have been stronger to further improve the concept. The thought process behind the model is solid, though. One thing I’d suggest is using less spray paint—while I understand the reasoning behind it, it might have been a bit much. I would have liked to see more interactive mechanisms, perhaps magnets or a string, to move the train, adding more functionality to the design