PowerPoint Resources and Sites

last updated February 03, 2005

Preparing a PowerPoint presentation, points to consider 

1. choose your topic
2. plan carefully; is a PowerPoint presentation the best way to tell your story?
3. start with an introduction to your topic
4. follow with content that illustrates your story
5. use special effects wisely so your story is the main idea
6. summarize the presentation in your second last slide
7. your last slide should tell us about you; include a photo of yourself and some, but not too much, personal info
8. will other viewers, such as your classmates, find your presentation interesting?
9. do you have a good number of slides? Too few may not tell your story; too many may bore your audience
10. will you need to speak to your audience or are your slides sufficient to tell your story?

Features to watch 

1. Did you include your initials in the file name?
2. If your presentation file is larger than 2 MB see if you can reduce it by using alternative graphic formats (JPEG for photos or GIF for diagrams)
3. Watch for graphic distortion; maintain aspect ratio when sizing
4. Be wary of using a lot of text
5. Allow sufficient time for your audience to read text
6. Is there good contrast between text and background?
7. Are you using sound? This may make your file quite large. Also, some computers you might use to show your presentation may not be set up for sound.
8. A reasonable guideline for the number of slides is 10 or more; consider your topic.

Websites for PowerPoint

The following links were active as of February 3, 2005. They could benefit from evaluation by students or other interested users. Some points to evaluate:

• version(s) of PowerPoint covered
• organisation of site
• level of skills expected: beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert
• ease of use
• helpfulness

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