Effective Use of Powerpoint

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

Effective Use of Powerpoint

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