Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Presentations
So, some students have given their presentations already and there are still several to go. From what you've seen and from what you know, what do you think the elements of a strong PowerPoint presentation are? What are some pitfalls that all people using PPT should try to avoid? What must you take into consideration when you are creating your PPT presentation? How do these considerations guide your design?
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I think the most effective way to use a power-point presentation is not to read directly off the power-point. This happens a lot where people put what they want to say on the power-point and don't have anything original to say when presenting. If all a person is going to do is repeat the things on the power-point then they should just email it to everyone. A strong power-point gets the audience involved and doesn't reveal everything about the project. It should show a graph or picture and then need the presenter to describe that picture. In order to break the monotony in my presentation, I did a small experiment to help the audience better understand the slide.
ReplyDeleteAn effective was to give a power point presentation is to not read off the slides too much. Having the slides memorized for the most part will help a lot. The presenter shouldn't look at the power point too much but make eye contact with the audience. The ppt helps to show the audience graphics of the report which helps the audience to understand the information presented. Some pitfalls are that power point presentations can sometimes become boring. The flow of the slides must be addressed. The presentation can't be jumping around from one thing to another, it needs to flow good.
ReplyDeletePower points are best used to give structure to a talk for the audiance. It is there so the Audiance can have a visual summary of what is being said, and occasionally to guide the presenter if they get the urge to go off topic (a problem I am personally prone to. The problem that tends to come with them is that unless the presenter has practiced enough, it tends to break a flow of speech and lead to more "umm" and "ahhh" stumbles. That and the temptation to put too much information on the slides.
ReplyDeleteA good check is that if you have more than 20 words on a slide, you might be doing it wrong.
Agreeing heavily with Kristen PPTs are easy to screw up. You can have a beautiful PPT but if you can't talk about the topic without reading the slides then you're doing something wrong. Luckily this is something I did not notice in the class. PPTs are best used as a way to give the audience information and act as a guideline. A rule i once learned is the 7-7 rule. No more than seven words to a line and no more than seven lines on a slide. Also pictures are good. This is a weak point for me, I tend to forget the pictures on PPT presentations.
ReplyDeleteTo echo whats been said before, PPT should be used as a tool, not as a presentation in itself. Before power point and even still, presentations often involved the use of a poster that supplemented the presentation. The most important figures and points were arranged on the poster in order to emphasize key points of the presentation while providing visual aids as well. When giving a powerpoint presentation, the goal should be to give a presentation that could be given even if the power went out, and design the powerpoint to supplement the key points and provide figures that cannot be easily explained verbally.
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