presentationzen

I think we have all sat though a PowerPoint that was just bad…There are numerous reasons why we might have thought this, loud colors, excessive pictures and clutter, too many words on each slide, all of this can be dizzying for the audience. The explanation mentioned in the text Presentationzen, “People have a hard time coping with excessive cognitive strain.” It seems that sitting through these presentations hasn’t been enough for us to see when enough is too much in our own work.It was mentioned that pictures when used for impact (rather than distraction) are remembered more than bullet points…This is probably why you have never heard the term a bullet point is worth a thousand words!  I think that the best advice given concerned  the use of 3-D graphs, avoid it. If I am trying to digest information being presented to me I would like to be able to easily tell what it is I am looking at (as we all know we have to have a healthy skepticism when it comes to how statistics are presented anyways). Learning how to streamline a PowerPoint is a skill that would be useful for both teachers and students alike. Being a teacher you have a captive audience but that does not mean that they have to pay attention. Having concise but interesting visual aid will help to engage students more than a cluttered or boring PowerPoint. You probably won’t get any Kudos for a good one but they will remember the information even if they don’t know that it was by the assistance of your visual aid. A bad PowerPoint however, will be remembered but for all the wrong reasons!