Using Computer Presentation Programs Effectively

"Are you still doing speeches in the stone age?" This was the question a participant asked of a presenter at a recent conference I attended. The presenter had lugged along a box of transparency slides to show during his half-day seminar, and I admit, I was a little doubtful at first about the lack of modern technology. The presentation went well, overall, but could have clearly been enhanced by a good Microsoft PowerPoint, Lotus Freelance, or Aldus Persuasion program. Additionally, it would have been much easier to present for the speaker, and definitely lighter to carry on the airplane.Later in the month, however, I got a different perspective when I spoke a participant in one of my seminars after the rest of the class had gone. She told me that when she first walked into the room, she was very disheartened to see a computer-generated image being shown on the screen. She confided that although she had enjoyed the presentation entirely, and that I had overcome her initial apprehension, her first reaction was:"Oh no! Not another PowerPoint Presentation"

This reaction is not unique, I've found. When talking to people in my seminars and social settings, the message I get is clear; People are tired of worn-out power point presentations! Does this mean we should jettison the technology and go back to the "stone age", as one person put it, in giving our presentations? No more than we should ban television because of the likes of Jerry Springer and Temptation Island. The medium itself is not to blame, it is how that medium is used that falls short.

Creating Visual Aids That Really Work

Designing Effective Slides Using PowerPoint

Used wisely, PowerPoint^® and similar programs can be an effective tool to help audiences remember your message, while allowing you to prove, reinforce, and support your claims.

Used unwisely, PowerPoint becomes a distraction that upstages the presenter and buries the message. With its tumbling, whooshing, flying, singing and screeching graphics, PowerPoint can take on a life of its own.

All these bells and whistles can disconnect the slides from the presenter and destroy the reason for using them in the first place--to provide an audience with at-a-glance comprehension to support the presentation.

PowerPoint Tips: Create invisible buttons

From Mary-Ellen Finkelstein

In a recent discussion with Dr. Pavel Samsonov, a professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the topic of invisible buttons came up. I had encountered them before, so I thought I would explain.

Invisible buttons are AutoShapes with no fill and no line that have a hyperlink attached to them. You use them for two purposes:

• If you're navigating through the presentation, you may want your navigation to seem invisible to create a magical effect. The button may be small or may cover the entire slide.

• If viewers are navigating themselves, you may want them to be able to click anywhere on a slide to execute the hyperlink. In this case, the invisible button covers the entire slide.

For example, let's say you create a quiz that students will navigate by themselves. You may add hyperlinks from a question slide to a Correct and Incorrect slide, depending on which answer the person clicks. Then, you can hyperlink the Correct slide to the next question and the Incorrect slide back to the original question so viewers can try again.

By covering the entire Correct and Incorrect slides with an invisible, rectangular AutoShape, students just click anywhere to get to the right place.

To make the process easier, attach the hyperlink to your rectangle before you make it invisible. Then double-click it and use the Format AutoShape dialog box to change the line to No Line and the fill to No Fill.

PowerPoint Bullets Bye Bye

• Designing presentations without bullets is easy, but involves layout, thinking about your content and the processes you're describing, working with images that function as metaphors, and more.

• I recommend Cliff Atkinson's book, Beyond Bullet Points. It's a complete system for designing and organizing presentations without bullet points.

Now for the shortcut....

Using PowerPoint in the Classroom