Preparing a PowerPoint Presentation

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

3 Components • An effective presentation must have these 3

components • Content • Design • Delivery

Content • Decide on 2 or 3 main points and make sure

that everything you prepare leads to those points

• Make the content: • Clear • Simple • Logical

Design • Make it legible!!! • Do not put too much text on the slide • Text should contrast with the background • Images should work to clarify text

Delivery • Engage your audience with eye contact and

energy • Use your slides to support your presentation • If you are just going to read the slides you

might as well post the presentation online!

Preparation • Preparation is the key! • “A lack of preparation on your part should not

lead to an emergency for someone else!” • Figure out what room you are in and test

equipment prior to your presentation • If you need assistance ASK, prior to your

presentation

What version of PowerPoint? • If you create a presentation on the 2003

version of PowerPoint it will likely appear differently when you present

• Office 2007 is installed on all podium computers in AHS and on campus

• Differences are likely to be font and spacing related

• EXAMPLE: 372 slide presentation

Advice • Prepare the content of your presentation prior

to formatting the presentation • Add the content of your presentation before

‘messing’ around with the look and feel (save a copy at this time as well)

• Remember the content is the most important • Keep things simple!!!

Your first slide • Usually start off with the

title slide • To insert text, just click on

the desired area and start typing

• Demote (indent) text by typing Tab, promote using shift-Tab

• To add a new slide, click the button

Slide layouts • Allows you to split your

text into two columns or include images and other objects into your slides

• You can change the layout of an existing slide and still preserve the contents

• If the slide layout pane does not appear, go to Format -> Slide Layout in the menu bar

Images and Objects • Content boxes accept

objects other than text • You can insert more

content objects than there are content boxes, see the Insert menu

• Deleting a content object will bring back the content placeholder box

Fonts • Use common fonts – especially if you will

show the presentation on a different computer

• It might look like this on a different computer…

Colours • An Example of Colours

Colors per slide

• No more than four colors per slide• Too busy if use more• Viewers don’t know why you are using

color• The viewers don’t know what is important

and highlighted if you use lots of colors

Slide designs • Slide designs are

templates that define the background and text styles

• Usually, slide designs are applied to all your slides, but you can choose to attach it to specific slides

• Click on the tab to access the various templates

Slide transitions

• Slide transitions keep your presentation from being too monotonous

• It’s easier to work in Slide sorter view when dealing with transitions, click on View -> Slide Sorter in the menu bar

• Click on to bring up the Transitions panel

More advanced techniques

Custom animations and the Slide Master

Custom Animations • Access the Custom

Animation panel by going to the Animations Tab

• Transitions can be applied to each object in your slide, not just the entire slide

• Control timing and order of appearance

• Don’t use animations that appear from the left!

The Slide Master • To access the slide master,

click on the View tab and then Slide Master

• The slide master allows you to edit the template for your presentation

• Changes that you make here will appear on all of your slides

• Change text styles, add background images

More about the Slide Master • Using the Slide Master can allow global

changes to be made with ease • This is the design that should take place after

the development of your material

Outline View • Click on the Outline

tab of the left pane to switch to Outline View

• This mode gives you an overview of the textual content of your presentation

• You can edit the text in this mode

Slide Notes and Handouts • These are the printed versions of your

presentation • Provide further information not evident in the

slides themselves • Good for class handouts and PDF

downloadable versions on a course website • Substitute for lecture notes

Videos • Be careful incorporating videos into your

presentation • Save the video file to the same directory as

your presentation • wmv and avi formats are the best • Make sure you test your video with the exact

equipment prior to your presentation • WHY?

PowerPoint Etiquette • Watch your font size • Points, not paragraphs • Don’t go heavy on the transitions and

animations • Keep it simple • A picture is worth a thousand words

Backups • Keep backups of your work

• Common Sense really! • Try to think of how long it would take to

replace your work... instead of thinking about how long it would take to do the backup!

Save Save Save • Keep saving versions of your presentation

AwesomePresentation-V01.ppt AwesomePresentation-V02.ppt

• This way if anything horrendous happens you can go back to the previous version.

• Save your presentation in multiple locations

Where should I save? • Save to your N: drive while working in the

Computer Labs • Backed up every 4 hours • Hourly snapshots

• USB Device

• DO NOT SAVE TO THE DESKTOP!

When things go wrong! • Make sure that you have a copy of your

presentation in multiple locations • Your instructor will be supportive, do not

panic! • But be willing to adapt…

• Remember it’s the content of the presentation that matters!

There’s nothing on the screen! • Can’t get the screen to display? • Make sure the equipment is plugged in

• FN + F8

• It’s not always F8…

While you are presenting? Start Next slide or build Previous slide or build Jump to slide 14 Black slide White slide First slide Last slide Quick keys Re-start Quit / End show

F5 Right Arrow Left Arrow 14 Enter key B W Home End F1 Home Esc

Question & Suggestions… • If you have questions or suggestion, please

contact us at your leisure • Lowell Williamson llwillia@uwaterloo.ca