They all looked forward to weekends and special days when they could get together with their father also  at home. Since their mother’s birthday was coming up soon, Aditi and Ketan wanted to get a special present for her. They considered all possibilities but they just weren’t satisfied with anything. That was when Aditi, the computer geek among the two of them decided to make a presentation with Power Point.

‘What’s the point of your Power Point presentation?’ Ketan scorned.

‘Well, I can email it to her, and it will be a wonderful surprise for her when she opens it.’

‘Ok, but what will you put in that presentation of yours and why will she be surprised?’ Ketan asked, a little interested.

‘Anything! I’ll put up some of our pictures that we took last year on vacation in Mussoorie…I’ll write a poem for her and put that there too…I’m…’

Ketan was intrigued. ‘How do you plan to do this?’

‘Well, do you want to watch me make it?’ Aditi asked, smiling. She knew Ketan wouldn’t resist.

Aditi switched on the computer and started Power Point. She opened a blank presentation, and saved it as Mom. She gave it the title ‘Happy Birthday Mom’ and added a sub-title, ‘From Aditi’ n a flash, she did something and another slide opened.

‘What did you do?’ he asked surprised as she started typing things in the box.

‘I added another slide. That’s all.’

‘But you didn’t even go to the File Menu!’

‘Haven’t you heard of keyboard shortcuts?’ Aditi asked looking scornful.

‘Ok, which shortcut did you use?’ Ketan asked a little sheepishly.

‘CTRL+M. You press them together and another slide opens up pronto!’

‘But there are so many different options to choose from! I mean, there are completely blank slides, and there are others with text boxes. How do you know which one to choose?’

‘It depends on what you want in that slide. If I’m going to use pictures, then I’ll select a completely blank slide. If I want a caption with the picture, then I’ll select the ‘Title only’ slide.’

Aditi was now adding pictures to the slides. She went to the main menu on top, clicked on Insert and pointed the mouse pointer to Picture. From there she selected From File and then browsed through their computer for nice pictures of her mother and her family. She inserted one picture in each slide and added suitable captions to them.
Ketan watched interested as she inserted another slide and used it to type out a poem she had written earlier. When all this was done, she had about 20 slides in her presentation.

Ketan was impressed but Aditi felt critical of her own work. ‘It’s a little boring she said. Let me think what I can do to liven it up!’

Saying so, she went to Format in the main menu and then selected Apply Design Template. From the list that came up, she selected a design and instantly her presentation was transformed from a blank white one to a colourful one!

Aditi sat back and then pressed F5. Instantly a slideshow opened. Ketan and Aditi watched the whole slideshow and Ketan was impressed despite himself. It wasn’t as if Ketan didn’t know how to use Power Point, but he had never thought of using it in such a creative way.

‘Now what?’

‘One last thing.’ She went to the main opening slide and used the insert option to insert a Clip Art picture. There, she hunted through the selection offered by Windows and then selected a birthday cake with candles. When she clicked one more time, the picture was inserted below her title, ‘Happy Birthday Mom’.
Aditi turned to him. ‘I just have to email it to mom on her birthday and she will see it when she opens her email! Won’t she be surprised?’

Ketan agreed reluctantly. ‘I wish I’d thought of something like this too!’