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Friday, May 15, 2009

The Ten Sins of PowerPoint




Aloha Haumana,

Please read the following to learn more about using PowerPoint effectively.

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http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/21cp/syllabus/powerpoint_tips2.htm

http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/21cp/syllabus/powerpoint_tips.htm
Gary Chapman, LBJ School of Public Affairs
Showing things to an audience during a speech is as old as public speaking. In nearly all cases, showing an audience a physical thing, an actual object, is the best way to engage an audience’s attention. But when this isn’t possible, presentation software like PowerPoint (or Apple’s Keynote software) allows the modern public speaker to show things to an audience on a large screen.
What has been turned upside-down over the past decade’s spread of PowerPoint, for most PowerPoint users, is that the “speech” is now mostly what’s on the screen, rather than what is spoken. In other words, the proper relation of the illustration tool to the speech has been reversed. In the opinion of many people, this has tragically damaged the art of public speaking. No one can imagine Abraham Lincoln nor Martin Luther King, Jr., needing PowerPoint. But today many people who give oral presentations cannot imagine doing so without PowerPoint.
In the interest of restoring some balance to the use of PowerPoint, without rejecting its use altogether, here are some suggestions for how to use PowerPoint effectively.


Ten Thoughts About How to Use PowerPoint Effectively

1. PowerPoint, when displayed via a projector, is a useful tool for showing audiences things that enhance what the speaker is saying. It is a useful tool for illustrating the content of a speech, such as by showing photos, graphs, charts, maps, etc., or by highlighting certain text from a speech, such as quotations or major ideas. It should not be used as a slide-show outline of what the speaker is telling the audience.

2. Slides used in a presentation should be spare, in terms of how much information is on each slide, as well as how many slides are used. A rule of thumb is to put no more than eight lines of text on a slide, and with no more than eight to ten words per line. In most cases, less is more, so four lines of text is probably better. Don’t display charts or graphs with a lot of information—if it’s useful for the audience to see such things, pass them out as handouts.

3. Unless you’re an experienced designer, don’t use the transition and animation “tricks” that are built into PowerPoint, such as bouncing or flying text. By now, most people roll their eyes when they see these things, and these tricks add nothing of value to a presentation.

4. Above all, use high-contrast color schemes so that whatever is on your slides is readable. Unless you are a talented graphic designer, use the templates that come with PowerPoint or Keynote, and keep it simple—high concept design in a slide presentation doesn’t help in most circumstances, unless you’re in the fashion or design fields. If you use graphics or photos, try to use the highest quality you can find or afford—clip art and low-resolution graphics blown up on a screen usually detract from a presentation.

5. Rehearse your PowerPoint presentation and not just once. Don’t let PowerPoint get in the way of your oral presentation, and make sure you know how it works, what sequence the slides are in, how to get through it using someone else’s computer, etc. Make sure that you can deliver your presentation if PowerPoint is completely unavailable; in other words, make sure you can give your speech without your PowerPoint presentation.

6. Get used to using black slides. There are few speeches that need something displayed on the screen all the time. If you include a black slide in your presentation, your audience will refocus on you, rather than on the screen, and you can direct them back to the screen when you have something else to show them. Put a black screen at the end of your presentation, so that when you’re done, the PowerPoint presentation is finished and off the screen.

7. Concentrate on keeping the audience focused on you, not on the screen. You can do this by using slides sparingly, standing in front of the audience in a way that makes them look at you, and, if possible, going to the screen and using your hand or arm to point out things on a slide. If you expect to be using PowerPoint a lot, invest in a remote “clicker” that lets you get away from the computer and still drive your presentation. If you don’t have one of those, it’s better to ask someone to run the presentation than to be behind a screen and keyboard while you talk.

8. If you show something on a computer that requires moving the cursor around, or flipping from one screen to another, or some other technique that requires interaction with the computer itself, remember that people in the audience will see things very differently on the projection screen than you see them on the computer screen. Keep motion on the screen to a minimum, unless you’re showing a movie or a video. It’s better to show a static screenshot of a Web page, embedded on a slide, than to call up the Web page in a browser on a computer. If you want to point out something on a Web page, go to the screen and point at it—don’t jiggle the cursor around what you want people to look at: their heads will look like bobble-headed dolls.

9. Don’t “cue” the audience that listening to your speech means getting through your PowerPoint presentation. If the audience sees that your PowerPoint presentation is the structure of your speech, they’ll start wondering how many slides are left. Slides should be used asynchronously within your speech, and only to highlight or illustrate things. Audiences are bored with oral presentations that go from one slide to the next until the end. Engage the audience, and use slides only when they are useful.

10. Learn how to give a good speech without PowerPoint. This takes practice, which means giving speeches without PowerPoint. Believe it or not, public speaking existed before PowerPoint, and many people remember it as being a lot better then than it is now. A few people use presentation software in extremely effective ways—Steve Jobs and Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig are two examples. Al Gore’s use of Keynote in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” was a good model. But these three examples don’t look at all like the way most people use PowerPoint. Avoiding bad PowerPoint habits means, first and foremost, becoming a good public speaker.


The Ten Sins of PowerPoint


1. PowerPoint is now used frequently as a speaker's "crutch," especially when the speaker is repeating or simply following what's displayed on a PowerPoint slide. This has been shown to diminish a listener's attention, and at the very least it shifts attention from the speaker to the screen, which detracts from the speaker's ability to engage with his or her audience. Speakers who simply recite what is on their PowerPoint slides are notoriously dull public speakers.

2. PowerPoint users routinely put more information on a slide than slides should display. PowerPoint is best used as a tool of illustration—to show audiences things that supplement and enhance what the speaker is saying. Unfortunately, many PowerPoint users put so much information on a single slide that the typical audience member can't read it easily, or doesn't even try. (Such slides are humorously known as "eye charts.") And the speaker has lost the audience’s attention to its frustration.

3. PowerPoint contains "tricks" of slide transition or text and graphics animation that are almost all unnecessary, distracting, and too “cute.” Tricks such as text that bounces into the screen, or shoots into the slide from the side margins, or flips upside-down, etc., add nothing to the presentation and usually detract from its professionalism.

4. Everyone has seen a PowerPoint presentation that exhibits an awful, sometimes even embarrassing, lack of design sense, especially when the presentation is displayed in low-contrast colors that make it difficult to read. Nothing destroys a presentation’s effectiveness more thoroughly than when the audience is straining to see what’s on the screen, or when people are wincing because of a bad design or color scheme.

5. PowerPoint routinely does something that trips up a speaker and suddenly the speech is stalled, or it becomes a series of mutterings about what has gone wrong with PowerPoint. When PowerPoint’s behavior gets in the way of delivering a speech, the speech has gone wrong in a way that is all too familiar.

6. Many speakers today assume, without thinking about it, that when they use PowerPoint they should have a slide on the screen during the entire presentation. Or they simply leave a slide on the screen, again without thinking about it. A common result is that the audience is forced to stare at a PowerPoint slide that has lost any connection to what is being said.

7. Because speakers who use PowerPoint often assume, again without thinking about it, that their audience will be, and should be, looking at the projector screen, they put little or no effort into their own visual engagement with the audience. “Screen accompanied by still-life of speaker” is unfortunately the most common picture of using PowerPoint for oral presentations.

8. Speakers who use a projector attached to a computer routinely forget that the sizes of the computer screen and that of the projection screen are vastly different—the latter is a multiple of the former. This means that when a speaker whips a cursor around on the computer’s screen, audience members get whiplash trying to follow the cursor around on the projection screen. Plus, what seems “normal” to do on a computer screen often looks like an incomprehensible psychedelic light show on a projection screen. Speakers who orate while simultaneously operating a computer are almost certain to lose their audience.

9. Audiences sense when a speaker is dependent on PowerPoint and they quickly grasp that the content of the speech is tied to the length of the PowerPoint presentation. This shifts the audience’s attention to how many slides there are, or, if the slides are delivered as handouts, how many slides are left to go—i.e., they are no longer listening to the speech.

10. People who use PowerPoint often think that preparing an oral presentation means preparing a PowerPoint presentation, and then delivering that, with accompanying oral commentary. Needless to say, the art of preparing a good speech is lost, or may never be developed in the first place. What PowerPoint can do should not be the starting point of an effective oral presentation.

Outline for Presentations

Aloha Haumana,

Below is the text for an Outline for Presentations. Please feel Free to refer to these now and in the future at any time.

Mahalo!

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See text below image...



GENERIC OUTLINE FOR ORAL PRESENTATIONS

INTRODUCTION
I. Attention-getting statement - gain the attention of the audience by using a quotation, telling a brief story or humorous anecdote, asking a question, etc.
II. Thesis statement - state the specific purpose of your presentation here.
III. Preview statement - overview of all of your main points. What you will share.

BODY
I. First main point
A. Subpoint
1. Sub-subpoint
2. Sub-subpoint
B. Subpoint
1. Sub-subpoint
2. Sub-subpoint
3. Sub-subpoint
II. Second main point
A. Subpoint
1. Sub-subpoint
2. Sub-subpoint
B. Subpoint
1. Sub-subpoint
2. Sub-subpoint
3. Sub-subpoint
C. Subpoint….

Note: The number of main points, subpoints and sub-subpoints you use will vary depending on how much information you have to convey and how much detail and supporting material you need to use. Subpoints and sub-subpoints are comprised of the supporting material you gather in your research.
****You should rarely have more than five main points in any presentation.


CONCLUSION
I. Summary statement - review all of your main points.
II. Concluding statement - prepare a closing statement that ends your presentation
smoothly.

Ho'ike Wednesday May 20th, 2009

'Ulumua

Aloha Kakou,

I hope everyone is doing well with the last two weeks of school remaining. We have many students presenting in Ho'ike this coming Wednesday the 20th of May.

The students we have presenting are:

Schae Ann - Wrestling Experience
Ka'ainoa - Independent Stores
Caitlyn - Plantations in Hawai'i
Lauren - Lo'i Kalo
Kendra - Tourism
Kaili - Kakau
Joshua - Gyotaku
Isaac - Telescopes on Mauna Kea

And we may also have Mahina and Ka'imi presenting on their trips to China and Maui with Na Hoa Aina.

We are focusing on getting in our work and I am focusing on making sure everyone is awarded credit for what they have done. I will meet with each of you to make sure we have the correct credit amounts.

Keep up the great work!
Kumu Feki
feki54@gmail.com




Keahiakahoe


E 'Ulumua Kakou!
Let us find our way forward together!


 
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