PowerPoint Presentations

After reading the articles on how to create a good PowerPoint presentation, the one article that I found the most interesting was the one intended for faculty. I am assuming that the presentation that was shown to faculty on how to give a good presentation must have been boring and ineffective itself, as I cannot begin to count how many lectures I have sat through that were a waste of my time. Through my first three semesters of college, I would have to say that the amount of professors who give good presentations is about half. There are just too many professors who load up their presentations with information and just repeat it, opposed to actually teaching the material. To be fair, I have also had great professors who are capable of putting together a lecture that grabs my attention in subjects I have never had a remote interest in. They were able to do this by passing out copies of the important parts of the slides, which allowed me to focus on what the teacher was saying opposed to just trying to copy down information. Their presentations periodically also contained sample test-like questions that engaged my interest and was helpful in allowing me to know how well I was learning the material. At first, creating a PowerPoint presentation seems simple and easy, but there are many ways to quickly ruin a presentation. My list of five things to be sure to do (or not) would be: 1) Just have subjects or keywords that help you in presenting your information, opposed to a bunch of sentences/bullets that no one is going to read or remember 2) Use legible fonts and colors so that the audience can actually read your slides 3) Minimize the effects you use as they probably do not help you present the information and just end up being annoying 4) Proofread the information that is on the slides, otherwise it will be unprofessional and the audience will lose interest 5) Be creative. Use a background or some feature that the audience has never seen before and is going to capture their attention. Although there are many aspects that can be detrimental to a presentation, with proper time and concern an effective PowerPoint presentation is more than capable.