Using PowerPoint

PowerPoint is fun. No, it really can be, despite all those horrendous meetings where people drone on and on thinking that just because they've 'done a PowerPoint' that their presentation is the biz. It ain't, sorry ;-)

Did you know that when Microsoft staff actually use it, they don't call it 'PowerPoint' at all? They call it speaker support. This should REALLY tell us everything we need to know about it... It's not your actual presentation, it is merely there to support you, the speaker, teacher, tutor, presenter.

Back to main Teaching index page

creating handouts

Using Word in Literacy

Using Excel in Numeracy

Using interactive whiteboards

Using VLEs

Web resources

Basic 'dos' and 'don'ts'
Using keyboard shortcuts
Saving as a Show
Hiding slides and custom shows
Using PowerPoint to help with handouts

1. Basic dos and don'ts, and things to be aware of

Most of the problems I've seen people have come down to two things: lack of knowledge of the package, and lack of rehearsal. Based on those two things, most presentations could be improved exponentially. Big up kudos to anyone who's brave enough to stand up in front of a room full of expectant faces, regardless of how much you know about presenting or PowerPoint. You have my whole-hearted respect.

Slide designing:

PowerPoint is a graphic medium - use graphics as much as possible.
Keep your slides clean and free of clutter for maximum impact.
Use a sans serif font for visual clarity.
Don't write too much! if you find yourself cramming text on a slide, think: a) perhaps you should say it instead; b) you will end up making the text smaller and smaller so it fits, so the poor people at the back of the room are going to have trouble reading it; c) you will be inclined to read it like a script, which is soooo dull.
Animation and transition... thorny subject. For young kids, I gather the sky's the limit. For adults - certainly for the 16+ audience - less is most definitely more. Stick to one type throughout. My favourite is plain old simple Appear.
For bulleted slides, use 'builds' with 'dim after animation' for maximum impact.
Graphs... yaaawn <thud> Oh. You need to include them? OK, print annotated versions out and give as a handout, and have a text-free version on your slide and talk through it.
Sound effects are great once in a while, but not all the time, please. Do check beforehand that your classroom or meeting room has speakers!

When presenting:

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Please. If you've been given someone else's then make it your own - reorganise, rewrite, rejig.
Use the same slide to 'bookend' your presentation. Take your start slide and place it at the end. It allows your audience to know you're done, and is a nice way to wrap up and let them cough or shuffle or ask questions.
Turn off the projector before exiting PowerPoint. Don't let the world see that delightful picture of Britney Spears you have on your Desktop!
If your text is looking like it should be broken over two slides, you're writing too much - say it, instead.
Don't confuse the presentation with the handouts. I do know people who effectively write two presentations - one which has the bare bones (which of course they flesh out, as speakers), and one which uses the speaker's notes pages to expand on points to provide as handouts.
Think carefully about whether or not to provide handouts. Inveterate note-takers (like myself!) will always come armed with their own notepads (and are usually pretty picky about what type of notepaper they prefer anyway, heh). Others will sit and read your handout without paying the blindest bit of attention to you (which is disheartening when you've made the effort to get up there in the first place).
Never, oh please never, stand with your back to the audience talking to the screen. It's rude, and deaf people are then cut out of the loop.
Don't ever stand there reading out the text. We can read for ourselves. Get the kettle on and we'll join you for a cuppa when we're done ;-)
Check the room first, if you can, to ensure you have the equipment you need and won't trip over the cable because the nearest plug socket is miles away and you run extension cables all over the place. Been there, done that...
Reorganise the room if you want. Why not? Furniture isn't always nailed down!

I have to share with you here two wonderful websites. The first is Garr Reynold's presentation tips, and the second is his blog, PresentationZen, which is a wealth of information, critique and comment, albeit for a business perspective.

I'd also like to show you Dick Hardt's blindingly good keynote presentation at the OSCON 2005 conference - you don't need to know anything about the subject, just look at how he's managed to convey his point. Fantastic stuff.

2. Using keyboard shortcuts

These are very handy to help you control your presentation when you're viewing it as a slide show. For a full list, go to the slide show view and press F1.

Please try to avoid using the mouse. It takes a while for the cursor to reappear, by which point you're waggling it around all over the place, which is very distracting for audiences.

Ones I use:

F5 - to launch into a show
Esc - to quit out of a show
Space bar - to advance your slides/animation. I use this because it's the biggest button on the keyboard, and when you're standing up it's a lot easier - and discreet - to tap it. If you use page up/down or the arrow keys, you can easily hit the wrong one and go the opposite direction!
B - to render the screen black, temporarily. Press it again to resume your show.
<number> [Enter] - pressing a number followed by Enter allows you to go directly to that slide. It does help enormously, of course, to have made a note of the slide numbers somewhere... but there's nothing like being able to go straight to a previous slide someone refers to, without scrolling back up through endless slides trying to find it again!

3. Saving as a Show

This is a great way of making your presentation 'portable'. Have you ever been sent one of those emails with an attachment that when you click on it, it launches straight into a Ppt presentation? This is a Show.

The best advantage is for when you're running late to a meeting or a classroom. You can turn up, plug your laptop in, double-click on the icon for your presentation and bam, you're straight into it - no opening My Documents, furtling around for ages trying to find it, opening it in Ppt, then finally displaying it full-screen.

In order to do it, choose Save As and at the bottom of the dialog box, from the Save as type drop-down, choose PowerPoint Show.

N.B.: Bear in mind one important thing - you have saved as a different type of file altogether. This means that if you make changes to one, you'll have to change the other, too. The way I get around this is I use my standard presentation as a 'work-in-progress' file, and when I'm done, I will save it, then Save As a Show. That way I know my show is always the most up-to-date version. (I'll also save it somewhere obvious like the Desktop, for quick and easy access when presenting on client sites from a laptop.)

For the techies here, a standard presentation has the file extension of .ppt and a Show has an extension of .pps. Want to know more about file extensions? Go here.

4. Hiding slides and custom shows

It's sometimes handy to create a big, generic presentation and tailor it to suit your audience, rather than start from scratch over and over. The best advantage with this is that it saves on space on your hard drive or server, and of course all your related info is in one place, rather than saved multiple times with names like 'version 1', 'version 1 finished', 'version 1 marketing', 'version 1 HR' and so on!

Hiding slides allows you to - as it says on the tin - hide slides you don't want to display in a slide show.

To hide slides, display them in Slide Sorter View. Right click on the one(s) you want to hide, and select Hide Slide. You'll notice that your slide number now has a line through it. To show it again, right-click and select either Hide Slide again, or Unhide Slide (depending on your version).

To display hidden slides, when you're showing your presentation, you can press H when you're on the slide immediately before the hidden one.

A custom show is fairly similar to hiding slides but allows you to reorganise your slides to suit. From the Slide Show drop-down menu, choose Custom Shows. From the dialog box, choose New. Give your custom show a name, then from the panel in the left, you can pick which slides you want to include. Move them over to the right-hand panel using the Add button and don't forget to use the up/down arrows on the right to reorder if you prefer.

To display a custom show, go to the Slide Show drop-down menu; choose Custom Shows; pick the one you want and click the Show button.

5. Using PowerPoint to help with handouts

I often use PowerPoint's flexibility in handling graphics to create handouts, especially when Word is driving me nuts or I need something a little more bespoke. (Yes, yes, techies, calm thy beans - I do know there's all sorts of swishywhizz packages out there that are waaay better for manipulating graphics, but I don't have a huge budget and I know what I'm doing with PowerPoint, so it's just quicker!)