These days most students do at least one PowerPoint presentation in elementary school.
As you might expect, they utilize just about every annoying
sound effect, nauseating background color and dizzying animation feature
imaginable to make their first slideshow. There’s nothing wrong with
this, it's a great way for kids to learn about all the features
available in PowerPoint. But if you want your students to develop a
sense of design (or you're working with adult professionals who
desperately need to develop their sense of design) then you need some
guidelines to improve their PowerPoint presentations.
Here are some very reasonable guidelines for PowerPoint
Presentations (they are the same ones we stress for 7th graders for
reference):
- Use the same background for all the slides. When
in doubt use one of the Design Templates that came with PowerPoint.
These templates guarantee a professional looking background every time.
You can find even more premade templates on the Microsoft Office Website .
- Pick High Contrast colors. High contrast means
light letters on a dark background for example. High contrasting
colors makes it much easier to read the slides. When in doubt use one
of the Design Templates that came with PowerPoint. This guarantees high
contrast colors.
- Use one good picture or graphic per slide.
PowerPoint is a visual medium so please use pictures and graphics.
Just make sure the pictures are relevant to the topic and large enough
for the audience to see and appreciate them. Search online for free images.
- Minimum of 32 pts for the font size.
Remember you’re making a presentation and not an eye exam. Your
audience should be able to read the slides without binoculars.
- Maximum of 5 lines of text per slide.
Use bullet lists and phrases rather than whole sentences. Plan on
explaining the bullets and phrases as part of your oral presentation.
- Please don’t read the slides to your audience.
Generally speaking, all the members of your audience are literate.
Instead of reading the slides to them use the slide as a launching point
to tell them more about your topic.
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