by Rae Drysdale
(Carrickfergus, N Ireland, UK)
After Slide with Diagram of Calendar
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When pupils start a new school year, it seems a long time until the exams. To emphasize the importance of attendance, I used 30 calendar-type icons (drawn in PowerPoint) to represent 30 weeks. As the talk stressed the passing of weeks for various events, icons faded from the screen. This visual was much more effective in illustrating the passing of time than figures and bullet points and also avoided reading the slide to the pupils and their parents.
3 shapes were used, and a letter x to represent attendance, the rounded corners being adjusted. It was easier to draw the shapes quite large and then group them, cut and paste as an image (jpg or png)and then resize. I duplicated the final image and used PowerPoint Align and Distribute to achieve a neat finish.
It would be easy to adapt this to many situations emphasizing the passing of time. An icon can be a day, a week or a month as fits the need.
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Tutorial for Creating Calendar Icons
by Rae Drysdale
(Carrickfergus, N Ireland, UK)
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Make use of PowerPoint’s gradients and ability to create images, by creating a simple calendar icon that you can use to display dates or whatever you need. I used an X to represent attendance. How about an H for holiday, the letters S,M,T,W,T,F,S for the days of the week or for small children you might use pictures to represent what is happening on certain days. I’m sure you will think of many uses.