PowerPoint has a variety of applications. In addition to designing slides for presentations I have used it to make promotional posters and to design logos and buttons for the animal welfare groups that I am involved with (see Life by PowerPoint). I have also started creating videos. You can insert music to link to your slides (for the examples below I used music from iStockPhoto.com). For me, the biggest challanges in making videos with Powerpoint are telling my story in just a couple of minutes (I recommend you keep you videos to 2-3 minutes), and having the music timed just right.
Re timing: using the Transitions tab you can select the transition you want and how long you want the slide to viewed. I find that somewhere between 3-8 seconds works best, depending on what is on the slide. Once your slide show is running to the music you can convert it to a video format. In PowerPoint 2010 go to File – Save & Send – Create Video.
Here are 2 examples.
Joe Pops
Refuse to be boring