Check this site or read Doug Lowe's Microsoft Office PowerPoint for Dummies book to learn how to use PowerPoint
software effectively.
When designing PowerPoint presentation, remember that great looking
slides never compensate for thin content. Therefore, avoid the temptation to
spend too much time making your slides look good and not enough time preparing
your content. You can apply the 3 x 3 Writing Process to create a visually
appealing presentation.
Analyzing the Situation
Making the best content and design choices for your slides depends
greatly on your analysis of the presentation situation. Will your slides be
used during a live presentation? Will they be part of a self-running
presentation? Will they be saved on a server so that those with Internet access
can watch the presentation at their convenience? Will they be sent as a
PowerPoint show or a PDF document to a client instead of a hard-copy report?
Are you converting PowerPoint slideshows for viewing on video iPods or
BlackBerry devices?
If you are e-mailing the presentation or posting it online, the slides
will typically feature more text than if they were delivered orally. If,
however, you are creating slides for a live presentation, your analysis will
prompt you to choose powerful, telling images over boring text-laden slides.
Anticipating Your Audience
Think about how you can design your presentation to get the most
positive response from your audience. Primary ideas are generally best conveyed
with bold colours, such as blue, green, and purple. Because the messages that
colours convey can vary from culture to culture, colours must be chosen
carefully.
Just as you anticipate audience members' reactions to colour, you can
usually anticipate their reaction to special effects. Using animation and sound
effects—flying objects, swirling text, clashing cymbals, and the like—only
because they are available is not a good idea. Special effects distract your
audience, drawing attention away from your main points. You should add
animation features only if doing so helps convey your message or adds interest
to the content.
Adapting Text and Colour Selections
Adapt the amount of text on your slide to how your audience will use the
slides. As a general guideline, most graphic designers encourage the 6-×-6
rule: “six bullets per screen, max; six words per bullet, max.” For most
purposes, strive to break free from bulleted lists whenever possible and
minimize the use of text.
Adapt the colours based on where the presentation will be given. Use
light text on a dark background for presentations in darkened rooms. Use
dark text on a light background for presentations in lighted rooms. Dark
on dark or light on light results in low contrast, making the slides difficult
to read.
Organizing Your Slides
When you prepare your slides, translate the major headings in your
presentation outline into titles for slides. Then build bullet points by using
short phrases.
The slides you create to accompany your spoken ideas can be organized
with visual elements that will help your audience understand and remember what
you want to communicate.
Working with Templates
When you craft your template, be cautious about selecting the slide
templates that came with the program. They have been seen by millions and
amount to what one expert has labelled “visual clichés.”
Overused templates and even clip art that ship with PowerPoint can weary
viewers who have seen them repeatedly in presentations. Search for PowerPoint
template in Google to find new ones instead of using a standard template,
Composing Your Slideshow
Many users fall into the trap of excessive formatting and programming
when composing slideshow. To avoid this trap, set a limit for how much time you
will spend making your slides visually appealing. Make sure to spend enough
time on what you are going to say and how you will say it.
Remember that not every point or every thought requires a visual. In
fact, it's smart to switch off the slides occasionally to direct the focus
to yourself. Darkening the screen while you discuss a point, tell a story, give
an example, or involve the audience will add variety to your presentation.
Create a slide only if the slide accomplishes at least one of the
following purposes:
·
Generates interest in what you are saying and helps the audience follow
your ideas
·
Highlights points you want your audience to remember
·
Introduces or reviews your key points
·
Provides a transition from one major point to the next
·
Illustrates and simplifies complex ideas
Designing for Optimal Effect
To keep your audiences interested and help them retain the information
you are presenting, try to avoid long, boring bulleted lists in a presentation.
You can alter layouts by repositioning, resizing, or changing the fonts for the
placeholders in which your title, bulleted list, organization chart, video
clip, photograph, or other elements appear.
You may use stock photos that you can download from the Web for personal
or school use without penalty or consider taking your own pictures if you own a
digital camera.
Revising, Proofreading, and Evaluating Your
Slideshow
This is the time when you will focus on making your presentation as
clear and concise as possible. If you are listing items, be sure that all items
use parallel grammatical form. Use PowerPoint's Slide Sorter View to
rearrange, insert, and delete slides during the revision process.
As you are revising, check carefully to find spelling, grammar,
punctuation, and other errors. Nothing is as embarrassing as projecting errors
on a huge screen in front of an audience. Also check for consistency in how you
capitalize and punctuate points throughout the presentation.
Consider whether you have done all you can to use the tools PowerPoint
provides to communicate your message in a visually appealing way. In addition,
test your slides on the equipment and in the room you will be using during your
presentation. Do the colours you selected work in this new setting? Are the
font styles and sizes readable from the back of the room?
Many promising presentations have been sabotaged by technology glitches
or by the presenter's unfamiliarity with the equipment. Fabulous slides are of
value only if you can manage the technology expertly
Practising and Preparing
Allow plenty of time before your presentation to set up and test your
equipment (see the PowerPoint Preshow Checklist).
Confirm that the places you plan to stand are not in the line of the
projected image. Audience members do not appreciate having part of the slide
displayed on your body.
Make sure that all links to videos or the Web are working and that you
know how to operate all features the first time you try.
No matter how much time you put into preshow setup and testing, you
still have no guarantee that all will go smoothly. Therefore, you should always
bring backups of your presentation. Overhead transparencies or handouts of your
presentation provide good substitutes. Transferring your presentation to a CD
or a USB flash drive that could run from any available notebook might prove
useful as well.
Keeping Your Audience Engaged
In addition to using technology to enhance and enrich your message, here
are additional tips for performing like a professional and keeping the audience
engaged.
·
Know your material. This will free you to look at your audience and gaze
at the screen, not your practice notes.
·
Maintain genuine eye contact to connect with individuals in the room.
·
As you show new elements on a slide, allow the audience time to absorb
the information. Then paraphrase and elaborate on what the listeners have seen.
Do not insult your audience's intelligence by reading verbatim from a slide.
·
Leave the lights as bright as you can. Make sure the audience can see
your face and eyes.
·
Use a radio remote control (not infrared) so you can move freely rather
than remain tethered to your computer. Radio remotes will allow you to be up to
15 metres away from your laptop.
·
Maintain a connection with the audience by using a laser pointer to
highlight slide items to discuss. Be aware, however, that a dancing laser point
in a shaky hand may make you appear nervous. Steady your hand.
·
Don't leave a slide on the screen when you have finished discussing it.
In Slide Show, View Show mode, strike B on the keyboard to turn
on or off the screen image by blackening it. Pushing W will turn the
screen white.
·
Some presenters allow their PowerPoint slides to “steal their thunder.”
In developing a presentation, don't expect your slides to carry the show.
Remember that slides should be used only to help your audience understand the
message and to add interest. Your audience came to see and hear you.
Eight Steps to Making a Powerful
Multimedia Presentation
We have now discussed many suggestions for making effective PowerPoint
presentations, but you may still be wondering how to put it all together. Here
is a step-by-step process for creating a powerful multimedia presentation:
1. Start with the
text. The text is the foundation of your presentation. Express your ideas by
using words that are clear, concise, and understandable.
2. Select background
and fonts. Select a template that will provide consistent font styles, font sizes,
and a background for your slides. As a general rule, use no more than two
font styles in your presentation. The point size should be between 24 and 36.
Title fonts should be larger than the text font.
3. Choose images that
help communicate your message. Images, such as clip art, photographs,
and maps, should complement the text. Never use an image that is not
immediately relevant. Bear in mind that some people consider clip art
amateurish, so photographs are usually preferable. In addition, clip art is
available to any user, so it tends to become stale fast.
4. Create graphics. PowerPoint includes
a variety of tools to help you simplify complex information or transform a
boring bulleted list into a visually appealing graphic. You can use
PowerPoint's Illustrations tools in the Insert tab to create a
timeline or a flowchart. The SmartArt graphic will help you create an
organization chart or a cycle, radial, pyramid, Venn, or target diagram. With
the Chart function, you can select from more than a dozen chart types
including line, pie, and bar charts. Remember that graphics should be easy to
understand without overloading your audience with unnecessary details or too
much text.
5. Add special
effects. To keep your audience focused on what you are discussing, use
PowerPoint's Animations tab to control when objects or text appear on
the screen. Keep in mind that the first thing your audience sees on every slide
should describe the slide's content. Choose them with care so that the visual
delivery of your presentation doesn't distract from the content of your
message.
6. Create hyperlinks
to approximate the Web-browsing experience. Make your presentation more
interactive and intriguing by connecting your PowerPoint presentation, via
hyperlinks, to other sources that provide content that will enhance your
presentation. You can hyperlink to (a) other slides within the presentation or
in other PowerPoint files; (b) other programs that will open a second window
that displays items, such as spreadsheets, documents, or videos; and (c) if you
have an Internet connection, Web sites.
7. Engage your
audience by asking for interaction. When audience response and feedback
are needed, interactive tools are useful. To interact with your audience,
present polling questions. Audience members submit their individual or team
responses by using handheld devices read by a PowerPoint add-in program. The
audience immediately sees a bar chart that displays the response results.
8. Move your
presentation to the Internet. You have a range of alternatives, from
simple to complex, for moving your multimedia presentation to the Internet or
your company's intranet. The simplest option is posting your slides online for
others to access. Even if you are giving a face-to-face presentation, attendees
appreciate these electronic handouts because they don't have to lug them home.
Watch How to Avoid Death by
PowerPoint
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