Turning PowerPoint into an Interactive PDF

Contributed by Don Modesto
EAP Faculty - Ybor Campus

PROBLEM
To distribute Powerpoints to students:

1. allowing them to fill in blanks
2. without allowing them to edit the Powerpoint file (to prevent confusion re: which is the teacher’s and which are students’ revisions)
3. that they can print efficiently
4. ie, four slides to a page so as not to waste paper (I was appalled once to see a student had printed a 30-slide Powerpoint one slide to a page)

SOLUTION
Google turned up PDFill (http://www.pdfill.com/). Downloaded, PDFill puts an option in your Powerpoint Print dialogue allowing you to “print” to a PDF file (which can then be uploaded to Blackboard.) In your Powerpoint presentation, you select Print and then choose PDFill, as below:

After that, you configure for the layout, color, etc.:

When you tell it to “print,” PDFill converts your Powerpoint into a PDF file. I’ve used it several times now, and it works as described.

ANNOTATE THE PDF
When students download and open the pdf file, they will have to click the Add Text icon in the tool bar in order to add text to the page. The implementation is a little clumsy, but it works. As below, there are several formatting choices on the floating Add Text toolbar.

POWERPOINT SHOW FORMAT
I have previously distributed Powerpoints as “Powerpoint Shows” (Save as, Save as type: Powerpoint Show) which open immediately to a full screen presentation with no opportunity to edit or, alas, print. This is fine should you choose to distribute your entire Powerpoint. I no longer do this. I save my lesson in a students’ version and then replace critical terms with blanks to encourage active learning and then, as above, save and distribute it as a PDF.