PowerPoint

One fun thing about watching my classmates’ presentations was seeing how each person chose to explore topics they liked and wanted to share. I especially enjoyed the creative uses of sound clips; that element was often used to provide a bit of humor within the presentations.

A few presentations seemed a bit text-heavy, and it seemed like a few of my classmates felt they had to “get through” a lot of material. The presentations that were most enjoyable were the ones with a very narrow focus, which allowed the presenter to take his or her time during the presentation. One pet peeve I have is that I noticed a couple of times when there were factual or grammatical errors on a presentation; that is completely distracting, and as an audience member it makes me feel like the presenter couldn’t be bothered to adequately research their topic or review their slides for correctness.

The best presentations, in my opinion, had a semi-leisurely pace and a narrowly focused topic. This allowed the presenter to adequately explain their subject and complement their explanation with appropriate visuals. To improve my own presentation (and future presentations), I will rehearse, rehearse, rehearse! And be brutal with myself about narrowing the presentation scope in order to insure that I include only what is absolutely necessary.

I think that PowerPoint is a useful presentation tool, but only if used judiciously. It is too easy to cram slides full of material and add lots of animations and whirlygoogles which serve to detract from – rather than enhance – the audience’s ability to understand the topic. PowerPoint can complement a presentation by providing structure to it (and keeping the presenter on-track rather than off on a tangent) and displaying visuals which can solidify the concepts for the visual learners in a classroom. In short, I think PowerPoint is like any other tool – terrific when used appropriately and for the right job, potentially disastrous if used incorrectly.