PowerPoint

Microsoft Powerpoint is really a great program. Unfortunately, some people (myself included) can make really bad Powerpoint presentations! The most common problems seem to stem from the tendency to overthink or over-"beautify" the slides. Using the custom fill effects for each and every slide makes it look like a kindergartner's cardboard paper cutout catastrophe. A simple custom or preset theme is much preferable for consistency. Same goes for overusing custom animations. It is not necessary to include ever possible intro and outro Powerpoint provides. Irony can most of the time be lost upon the audience. In high school, I thought it would be funny to cut out a picture of my teacher's head and make it move around the slide near the end of the Powerpoint. Even though it totally worked because the teacher's back was turned when I clicked the button, I may have gotten points taken away had he seen it! A Powerpoint presentation should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Too many slides with too much information can muddle a project. Too little information on slides can leave the presenter with too little to go off of and can and has resulted in many "um"'s and "uh"'s and "errrrrrrr"'s. This leads to the last major pitfall, which is not knowing what is on the slide until it is clicked! The whole presentation falls apart when something should be somewhere else or an animation doesn't fall into place with what is being talked about.

A good presentation, on the other hand, does not have any or has very few or minute variations of the problems listed and described above. I prefer a presentation with a common theme representative of the tone of the subject matter. The animations don't vary too much. The audience is engaged with the speaker. Most importantly, everything should flow together. The speech should go hand in hand with the slides. Ideally, the whole thing should be timed so that no clicks are needed and the presenter doesn't have to look at but can still refer to the slides at any point. In this manner, successful presentations for work or school related projects may be formed.