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PowerPoint and LecturesGiving Effective Presentations to High School and College Students
PowerPoint can be as dry as a monotone lecture or as entertaining as an animated teacher. There are ways to make a typically boring lecture more exciting.
PowerPoint is more than a relief from writing on the board, and its ability to provide flashy transitions will not guarantee students will remember the information or topic. The goal when using presentations is not only to keep students awake but also engaged. There are several tricks and strategies that can take a formerly typical lecture and make it more entertaining and more effective for high school and college students. ContentWhen preparing slides for a lecture, keep each slide to a few key points. Provide a few words or phrases with bullets, a relevant picture or graph, and a subtle background color. This gives students an outline of the information while the teacher verbally provides more information. It also encourages students to listen instead of read the slides and to take notes on key points with which they are not familiar. HandoutsPowerPoint provides a print option called “handouts” that allows the teacher to print copies of the slides with 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 or 9 per page. The choice of nine per page produces very small slides which only work well if the slides contain very little information in a large font size. The choice of three puts the three slides on the left and lined writing space for notes on the right. Handouts are useful for assisting students with note taking skills, especially if the slides are limited to key points and students must take notes on more specific information. Another option would be to create a second version of the presentation with some pieces missing, thus requiring students to write in specific information. In either case, it encourages students to listen to the information and write down information that is important. Special EffectsFeatures such as slide transitions, animated gifs and sounds can catch students’ attention, but use them too much or without connection to the lecture and students will remember the entertainment but not the content. To catch their attention but not with the loss of content engagement, choose one or two transition styles for slides and text and only add sounds or animated gifs if they are related to the information. PowerPoint also provides the ability to embed videos or links to web sites. Short video or audio clips can be added to a slide to enhance a point, providing education and entertainment for students. Links to web sites allow the teacher to conveniently provide students with a copy of the link in their handouts as well as a click point during the lecture to show relevant, online resources or content.
The copyright of the article PowerPoint and Lectures in Technological Teaching Aids is owned by Tammy Andrew. Permission to republish PowerPoint and Lectures in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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