Tweet
I've been in school for a while and have seen tons of presentations and very rarely do I see a good one. i just posted this in a message board for my class where we will need to do presentations:
Remember your goal
o Your goal is not to entertain or dazzle us, your goal is to educate us about a certain topic, keep this in mind for the rest of the advice.
• SPEAK UP.
o I’m serious, I sit in the back row and honestly most of the people giving presentations mumble or honestly just don’t speak up enough to be heard, if I can’t hear you I just stop trying, seriously this is the most important part of your presentation, it doesn’t matter how well you know your stuff if I can’t hear a word you say then I didn’t learn a darn thing.
• Spell check
o Seriously it’s built into all office software and there is always http://www.spellchecker.net/spellcheck/
o You are making a professional presentation, I see very few presentations without at least one easy to catch spelling error
o Now for some of you English is a second language and spell check doesn’t get everything but it will get most stuff.
• Make sure your slides are legible.
o Last semester in operating systems I saw a couple different presentations where slides were difficult to read. Now there’s a few things to avoid:
• Clashing colours can make reading very difficult and actually hurt people’s eyes.
• Colours that blend and are too close to each other for background and text, seriously grey writing on a black background? Then having pictures behind your text. One presentation in particular seemed to be almost purposely created to be difficult to read with text colours changing in the same line and actually being the exact same colour as the background picture at that point.
• In general just avoid background pictures behind your text altogether, it’s distracting when trying to read your text, it really is. Having pictures is fine just not behind your text.
• Larger text is better, use a little common sense on this one and don’t go too large. Honestly stay close to the default sizes in powerpoint and you’ll be fine.
• Wall of text
o Break it up
o Use bullet points, that slide is only going to be up for half a minute probably
o Bold and underline titles only, it looks weird in the middle of the sentence.
• If you are going to show code, break it up into small blocks on separate slides so we can actually read it, also don’t overcomment it in the slide, you are the comments.
• Use powerpoint
o People make fun of it, but that’s because people get lazy with it or get stupid with it what those people forget is:
- It’s easy to use
- There are tons of guides online for using it, and I mean tons
- It has almost every tool you need
- It has spell check
- This is exactly what it is designed to do
• Make sure your tech works and you know how to use it
o Go to the room ahead of time, hook up your laptop and make sure it works, make sure you know how to use the room controls, they don’t take long but the quicker you start the better.
o If your laptop is like mine it has almost no battery make sure you know where to plug in
o Of you are running Win 7 you just need to press windows key + p to switch to an external screen
• Practice and know your stuff
o During the presentation the more you pause, the more you have to read the slides and the more you say umm (I do it a lot) the worse your presentation is
o You are educating me, I should feel like you know this better than me and not the other way around
• Have a backup
o Your laptop will die eventually, and it may very well be that day, have your presentation on a flashdrive, in your email, on your school account.
o Your laptop dying is not your fault but having no backup is
• Do not use a laser pointer
o They can be a little hard to see on the screen usually and are just a waste of time, just point with your arm it’s quicker and easier
• Please don’t blind me
o The room is dark and the main source of light is the screen so when you drastically change colour from black to white or have it flicker or rapidly change colour it may very well make me temporarily blind me as my eyes do not adjust very quickly at all.
• Know your audience, respect your audience.
o We are all at the same level as you, assume we are as smart as you. Last year during my one of my classes where we had to redesign the trent portal as a project, one of the groups gave a presentation that I felt was very childish and disrespectful and actually used the word bullshit. I almost walked out.
o It’s ok to have some humour and having a funny presentation can be good but stay on topic and keep it tasteful.
o You don’t have to explain every detail we’re all in a fourth year class, so we know what a variable is.
• Usually you are given a time estimate on how long you need to be
o It’s ok to not be 15 minutes exactly (14-16 minutes is good) but too short and too long will definitely hurt you
o Best rule of thumb is to assume about 2 slides a minute on average
• Don’t panic if it’s not perfect
o Being confident and rolling with it will make up for a lot
• Stay inside powerpoint if possible
o If you want to show something from a website then copy and paste it into a slide it breaks up the flow other wise if you alt tab to firefox.
if you have to switch out have it ready to go, have it open already in another window
Now let’s talk content.
- Have a title slide,
o It lets us know what the title is and lets us know when you are ready
- A lot of presentations have an agenda, that’s fine but don’t spend very long on it
- Each slide unless it is just a picture or diagram should have a topic heading
o If I can’t tell what your picture is then don’t have it in there.
- You are giving a verbal essay basically,
o Essays are intro, content, conclusion for a reason.
o Start with an intro, in this case start with the problem you are solving and the current state of the industry area you are working with
o Then work into the content, stick with one topic and don’t jump around and back and forth
o Have a solid conclusion, have a quick summary and then a closing title slide.
- I have seen presentations that just end with no special slide and the people stood there and actually just said “that’s kind of it” don’t ever do that, have a slide even if it just says The End and then say thank you for listening we will now take questions.
o Unless the teacher specifically requests it don’t have a works cited slide, that what your paper is for.
I mean no disrespect to anyone with this post, also this was not requested by anyone I wrote it because if I have to sit through one more bad presentation i may just stand in the middle of class and scream and cry until it is over.
Remember your goal
o Your goal is not to entertain or dazzle us, your goal is to educate us about a certain topic, keep this in mind for the rest of the advice.
• SPEAK UP.
o I’m serious, I sit in the back row and honestly most of the people giving presentations mumble or honestly just don’t speak up enough to be heard, if I can’t hear you I just stop trying, seriously this is the most important part of your presentation, it doesn’t matter how well you know your stuff if I can’t hear a word you say then I didn’t learn a darn thing.
• Spell check
o Seriously it’s built into all office software and there is always http://www.spellchecker.net/spellcheck/
o You are making a professional presentation, I see very few presentations without at least one easy to catch spelling error
o Now for some of you English is a second language and spell check doesn’t get everything but it will get most stuff.
• Make sure your slides are legible.
o Last semester in operating systems I saw a couple different presentations where slides were difficult to read. Now there’s a few things to avoid:
• Clashing colours can make reading very difficult and actually hurt people’s eyes.
• Colours that blend and are too close to each other for background and text, seriously grey writing on a black background? Then having pictures behind your text. One presentation in particular seemed to be almost purposely created to be difficult to read with text colours changing in the same line and actually being the exact same colour as the background picture at that point.
• In general just avoid background pictures behind your text altogether, it’s distracting when trying to read your text, it really is. Having pictures is fine just not behind your text.
• Larger text is better, use a little common sense on this one and don’t go too large. Honestly stay close to the default sizes in powerpoint and you’ll be fine.
• Wall of text
o Break it up
o Use bullet points, that slide is only going to be up for half a minute probably
o Bold and underline titles only, it looks weird in the middle of the sentence.
• If you are going to show code, break it up into small blocks on separate slides so we can actually read it, also don’t overcomment it in the slide, you are the comments.
• Use powerpoint
o People make fun of it, but that’s because people get lazy with it or get stupid with it what those people forget is:
- It’s easy to use
- There are tons of guides online for using it, and I mean tons
- It has almost every tool you need
- It has spell check
- This is exactly what it is designed to do
• Make sure your tech works and you know how to use it
o Go to the room ahead of time, hook up your laptop and make sure it works, make sure you know how to use the room controls, they don’t take long but the quicker you start the better.
o If your laptop is like mine it has almost no battery make sure you know where to plug in
o Of you are running Win 7 you just need to press windows key + p to switch to an external screen
• Practice and know your stuff
o During the presentation the more you pause, the more you have to read the slides and the more you say umm (I do it a lot) the worse your presentation is
o You are educating me, I should feel like you know this better than me and not the other way around
• Have a backup
o Your laptop will die eventually, and it may very well be that day, have your presentation on a flashdrive, in your email, on your school account.
o Your laptop dying is not your fault but having no backup is
• Do not use a laser pointer
o They can be a little hard to see on the screen usually and are just a waste of time, just point with your arm it’s quicker and easier
• Please don’t blind me
o The room is dark and the main source of light is the screen so when you drastically change colour from black to white or have it flicker or rapidly change colour it may very well make me temporarily blind me as my eyes do not adjust very quickly at all.
• Know your audience, respect your audience.
o We are all at the same level as you, assume we are as smart as you. Last year during my one of my classes where we had to redesign the trent portal as a project, one of the groups gave a presentation that I felt was very childish and disrespectful and actually used the word bullshit. I almost walked out.
o It’s ok to have some humour and having a funny presentation can be good but stay on topic and keep it tasteful.
o You don’t have to explain every detail we’re all in a fourth year class, so we know what a variable is.
• Usually you are given a time estimate on how long you need to be
o It’s ok to not be 15 minutes exactly (14-16 minutes is good) but too short and too long will definitely hurt you
o Best rule of thumb is to assume about 2 slides a minute on average
• Don’t panic if it’s not perfect
o Being confident and rolling with it will make up for a lot
• Stay inside powerpoint if possible
o If you want to show something from a website then copy and paste it into a slide it breaks up the flow other wise if you alt tab to firefox.
if you have to switch out have it ready to go, have it open already in another window
Now let’s talk content.
- Have a title slide,
o It lets us know what the title is and lets us know when you are ready
- A lot of presentations have an agenda, that’s fine but don’t spend very long on it
- Each slide unless it is just a picture or diagram should have a topic heading
o If I can’t tell what your picture is then don’t have it in there.
- You are giving a verbal essay basically,
o Essays are intro, content, conclusion for a reason.
o Start with an intro, in this case start with the problem you are solving and the current state of the industry area you are working with
o Then work into the content, stick with one topic and don’t jump around and back and forth
o Have a solid conclusion, have a quick summary and then a closing title slide.
- I have seen presentations that just end with no special slide and the people stood there and actually just said “that’s kind of it” don’t ever do that, have a slide even if it just says The End and then say thank you for listening we will now take questions.
o Unless the teacher specifically requests it don’t have a works cited slide, that what your paper is for.
I mean no disrespect to anyone with this post, also this was not requested by anyone I wrote it because if I have to sit through one more bad presentation i may just stand in the middle of class and scream and cry until it is over.
Comment