Scoring PowerPoints

By Jason Seliskar On April 14, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Informational, Opinion, Technology

PowerPoint is a great tool to enhance a presentation. One of the bad habits teachers do is having students make PowerPoint presentations and then they the students never get to present them. We like to show off these presentations at Open House, but did the students get the full effect or reason why PowerPoint is a good tool to help with a presentation. As the article states we need to stress at the beginning of a project that the research is 80 percent of the work. The PowerPoint is 20 percent of the project. Maybe not as much research as 80 percent, but pretty close. How many times do we give an assignment that involves this tool and we forget to instruct the students this process. We teach them the bells and whistles of PowerPoint, but do we teach them when they are appropriate? Students build such wonderful PowerPoints that have all the sounds and words flying in that we forget to them that is not the proper way to construct a PowerPoint. Students love all the flying noise-making objects and sounds that they miss the true intention of building a presentation. Keeping bullets to a minimum. Enhancing with a sharp picture and keeping precise but meaningful text. Even, as the article states, keep in mind your audience. I agree mostly with the article especially when it speaks of good oral presentation skills such as maintaining eye contact. If you have your students make PowerPoints take them all the way, by explaining and stressing that it is a tool with your presentation, not the presentation alone.