EFFECTIVE USE OF POWERPOINT AS A PRESENTATION TOOL

Microsoft Powerpoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful presentation software developed by Microsoft. It is a part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS operating system.

Presentations are created in a series of PowerPoint slides, using available templates or starting from a blank page. Users can import audio, video, graphics and text into PowerPoint to make interesting and dynamic presentations.

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Ever wonder how to create a good Powerpoint presentation?

Here are Some Tips for More Effective Powerpoint Presentations

Start by creating an outline

The most important part of any presentation is the content, not the graphical appeal. That is why you should develop your presentation with the content first, before deciding on the look (colors, graphics, etc.) Create a good structure for your presentation by reflecting on the goal of the presentation, what your audience is thinking right now, and what points you need to make in order to move the audience from where they are to where you want them to be.

Use a big enough font

When deciding what font size to use in your presentation, make sure it is big enough so that the audience can read it. I usually find that any font size less than 24 point is too small to be reasonably read in most presentation situations. I would prefer to see most text at a 28 or 32 point size, with titles being 36 to 44 point size.

Stop the moving text

When text comes on the screen, we want the audience to read the text, then focus back on the presenter to hear the message. If the text moves onto the screen in any way – such as flying in, spiral or zooming – it makes it harder for the audience members to read since they have to wait until the text has stopped before they can read it. This makes the presenter wait longer between each point and makes the audience members focus more on the movement than on what is being said.

No paragraphs

Where most presentations fail is that their authors, convinced they are producing some kind of stand-alone document, put everything they want to say onto their slides, in great big chunky blocks of text. Your slides are the illustrations for your presentation, not the presentation itself. They should underline and reinforce what you’re saying as you give your presentation — save the paragraphs of text for your script.

Use Contrasting Colours

If you want your audience to be able to see what you have on the slide, there needs to be a lot of contrast between the text colour and the background colour. Don’t think that just because the text looks fine on your computer screen that it will look fine when projected. Most projectors make colours duller than they appear on a screen, and you should check how your colours look when projected to make sure there is still enough contrast.

Write a script

A little planning goes a long way. Most presentations are written in PowerPoint without any sort of rhyme or reason. Since the point of your slides is to illustrate and expand what you are going to say to your audience. You should know what you intend to say and then figure out how to visualize it. Unless you are an expert at improvising, make sure you write out or at least outline your presentation before trying to put together slides.

One thing at a time

At any given moment, what should be on the screen is the thing you’re talking about. Our audience will almost instantly read every slide as soon as it’s displayed. Plan your presentation so just one new point is displayed at any given moment. Bullet points can be revealed one at a time as you reach them.

Use images sparingly

There are two schools of thought about images in presentations. Some say they add visual interest and keep audiences engaged; others say images are an unnecessary distraction. Both arguments have some merit, so in this case the best option is to split the difference: use images only when they add important information or make an abstract point more concrete.

Turn the pointer off

During a presentation, it is very annoying to have the pointer (the little arrow) come on the screen while the presenter is speaking. It causes movement on the screen and draws the audience attention from the presenter to the screen. The pointer comes on when the mouse is moved during the presentation.

Think outside the screen Remember, the slides on the screen are only part of

the presentation – and not the main part. Even though you’re liable to be presenting in a darkened room, give some thought to your own presentation manner – how you hold yourself, what you wear, how you move around the room. You are the focus when you’re presenting, no matter how interesting your slides are.

Have a hook

Like the best writing, the best presentation shook their audiences early and then reel them in. Open with something surprising or intriguing, something that will get your audience to sit up and take notice. The most powerful hooks are often those that appeal directly to your audience’s emotions – offer them something awesome or, if it’s appropriate, scare the pants off of them. The rest of your presentation, then, will be effectively your promise to make the awesome thing happen, or the scary thing not happen.

Blank the screen

Sometimes we want the image on the screen to disappear so that the audience is focused solely on the presenter. There are two ways to do this. The first is if you want to blank the screen with a black image, similar to shutting the projector off (we used to do this all the time with overhead projectors by just shutting the projector off). Just press the period key (.) on the keyboard and the image is replaced with a black image. Press the period key again and the image is restored.

Draw on the screen

Sometimes it can be valuable to be able to draw on the screen during your presentation to illustrate a particular point or item. This can be done in the following way. Press the Ctrl-P key combination to display a pen on the screen. Then, using the left mouse button, draw on the slide as you wish. To erase what you have drawn, press the E key. To hide the pen, press the A key or the Ctrl-H key combination.

Use notes pages and handouts Use the Notes pane that appears below the slide in

Normal view to write notes to yourself for your presentation or to create notes that you can print for your viewers instead of crowding your slides with text. You can also format and print handouts that contain up to nine slides per page.

Keep file size manageable

A common cause of stress when you work in PowerPoint is that the file becomes too large to edit or for the presentation to run smoothly. Fortunately, this problem is easy to avoid by compressing the media in your files and using native PowerPoint features whenever possible (such as tables, charts, SmartArt graphics, and shapes) instead of importing and embedding objects from other programs.

Know exactly what your viewers will see When you want to be sure that what you send is

what viewers will see, you can save the presentation in the PowerPoint slide show format so that the show starts for the recipients as soon as they open the file. But some variables, such as whether media will play correctly on the recipient's computer, may still affect what viewers see.

Ask questions

Questions arouse interest, pique curiosity, and engage audiences. So ask a lot of them. Build tension by posing a question and letting your audience stew a moment before moving to the next slide with the answer. Quiz their knowledge and then show them how little they know. If appropriate, engage in a little question-and-answer with your audience, with you asking the questions.

Modulate, modulate, modulate Especially when you’ve done a presentation before,

it can be easy to fall into a drone, going on and on and on and on and on with only minimal changes to your inflection. Always speak as if you were speaking to a friend, not as if you are reading off of index cards (even if you are). If keeping up a lively and personable tone of voice is difficult for you when presenting, do a couple of practice run-throughs.

Break the rules

As with everything else, there are times when each of these rules – or any other rule you know – won’t apply. If you know there’s a good reason to break a rule, go ahead and do it. Rule breaking is perfectly acceptable behavior – it’s ignoring the rules or breaking them because you just don’t know any better that leads to shoddy boring presentations that lead to boredom, depression, psychopathic breaks, and eventually death. And you don’t want that, do you?

Respectfully submitted to Prof. Erwin M. Globio, MSIT