Do you think your slide presentation goes over the students' heads? Is it more difficult for your class to copy your slides than to pay attention? If performed right, slide-based presentations can be an essential component of student interpretation and retention. However, slides can distract, detract and influence the importance of the message of the speaker. Fear not, it could be a matter of remembering some of the basic principles introduced, fine-tuned and used in academic and business environments. Here are some tips to take into consideration when trying to convey course material clearly and carefully.
# 1 The lecture is YOU, not the slides:
Slide-based lectures are an ideal way to coordinate and express your thoughts to your students. But it can be a crutch, too. The effect could be a lecture experience that could have been gleaned by printing the slides and reading them at home, even though you are tempted to build your lecture around your slide show. Remember instead that you give the lecture, not the slides. First, develop your lectures and then include them in slides supporting the lecture. One good way to determine whether your lectures are too diaphragmatic is to consider whether or not you can give your lecture without the slides. If you can't, you may want to go back to the start and start again. Likewise, once you're in class, engage your students instead of turning around and reading your slides. And just as the slides are supposed to strengthen what you say, you can verbally strengthen some of the keywords on the screen.
# 2 Focus on creating the context:
Consider organizing slides into a master contour before you start creating. You can thus ensure that you cover the main points in an organized way. You want every diaphragm to cover a key point so you can extend further. List slides are a perfect way to see where you were and where you go.
# 3 Keeping it simple:
It is tempting to bring a lot of data into one slide so that nothing is left out. Some teachers also put all their notes on a slide and read them directly. However, if you use slides to highlight the most relevant points, your students are more likely to absorb information. One helpful approach is to consider each bullet as one essential concept. Some presenters comply with the rule "7-6-5," which sets a limit to seven words per line, six lines per slide, and five heavy material slides in a row. If you feel that you can not communicate the details you need, consider providing your students with a handout or hyperlink for more comprehensive subjects. Similarly, animations, sounds and transitions can add style to a presentation, but also detract from the use or distraction of it.
# 4 And keeping it clean:
To make stylish slides, you don't have to be a graphic designer. Where some presenters go wrong, too many images, fonts and colours create a cluttered feel. Use plain, primary colours instead of neons or pastels if in doubt. If you want to improve your slides with pictures, you should try to stick to specific photos and reinforce your slide contents. Avoid using clip art or cartoon-like images.
A Google image search is an excellent way to navigate the web quickly. Seek to scan for png or jpg files that will appear in a diapositive sample. You want to keep the correct resolution and avoid stretching or scaling when you paste it into a slide. Use readable fonts like Arial, Big Caslon, Helvetica or Bookman when selecting the font. Try to limit the use of numbers and intervals where possible.
# 5 Being coherent:
Nothing can be more confusing than slides that seem to be part of various presentations. Consider using titles for some slides for all slides. It allows the students to track where they are at the lecture. Consider making a template for every slide in a lecture or even for all lectures. Rutgers offers pre-made PowerPoint templates that can be downloaded. It is also a great way of creating a slide master to achieve consistency without editing every slide you create. Besides your template, keep in mind consistency when you add fonts, animations and transitions.
All of these tips can be quickly introduced in your daily online classroom, tutorials, training sessions or presentation delivery within teams with the help of Edmodo Classroom. Edmodo Classroom is a modern teaching and presentation creation tool for the new generation learning community. It allows you to use tools like motion, zoom, Subject Tools, Image transfer and spatial relationships to bring your ideas to life. It also dos a fantastic job whenever you need to embed multimedia like images and videos into your presentation. Edmodo Classroom works like a mind map for modern teachers where they are free to arrange images, videos, text and ideas.
