Let’s Make Better Slideshows via Cult of Pedagogy

@cultofpedagogy

Let’s Make Better Slideshows

Cult of Pedagogy: 9.03.2019 by Jennifer Gonzalez [Podcast 22:25]

OK, look. We need to have a talk. A lot of you are out there giving lectures, presentations, and workshops, and your slideshows need work. Maybe not all of them, but definitely most. I thought I got the message out there a few years ago when I urged people to read Presentation Zen, the book that forever changed my own slideshows. But I didn’t have much of an audience back then, and since that time I’ve seen far too many PowerPoints and other slideshow presentations that still appear to be suffering from some very fixable problems.

So I’m going back in. I’ve put together a list of seven things you can do to make your slideshows better. A lot better. Here we go.

1. PUT IT IN PRESENTATION MODE (PLEASE!!)

I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat down to listen to a presentation, and watched in horror as the presenter simply scrolled through the slides while still in editing mode, where the featured slide takes up about half the screen, the thumbnails of the other slides are visible on the left, and the editing toolbar is still visible across the top. No no no no nooooo!!!

In both PowerPoint and Google Slides, there’s a button you can click to put your slide deck in presentation mode, where the entire screen is filled with just one slide and the animations work as they are supposed to. Doing this gives the audience a rich, full-screen experience with each slide, one at a time, which is much more pleasing than looking at the back end of it all.

2. CUT WAY BACK ON YOUR TEXT

Slides are meant to supplement and enhance your presentation, to provide visual interest and add new dimensions to your message. If your presentation is going to be memorable, the audience should get something from both you AND the slides. The slides themselves shouldn’t BE the presentation.

This seems like common sense, but somehow we have arrived at a place where many, many presenters use the slideshow to deliver the whole presentation: They put ALL the information on the slides and assign themselves the role of simply dictating that information to the audience. Once your audience realizes this is what you’re going to do for every slide, they immediately start looking for ways to occupy their brains for the foreseeable future.

⦿ Shorten your bullet points. Instead of writing long sentences or phrases on your slides, try sticking to just short phrases. Then use the notes panel to script out what you’re going to actually say.

⦿ Make more slides. Take one slide that has a lot of information and spread that text over several slides, rather than cramming it all together on one.

⦿ Create a handout. Many presenters and instructors want to put lots of information on their slides so they can provide those slides to students or audience members after the presentation, for reference.

3. UPDATE YOUR ASSETS

One of the simplest ways to improve your slideshows is to update outdated artwork and fonts.

═════════►

NEED SOME FRESH TEMPLATES?

I have just created a set of four slideshow templates that you might want to get for yourself. They’re available in PowerPoint for Windows and Google Slides. Each one contains 27 different slide designs, and they also come with a separate template for a 2-page handout, styled to look similar to the slideshow, so you can create a PDF to accompany your presentation.

The templates also come with a collection of video tutorials that show you exactly how to customize them for your use. Click on each design below to preview the whole template, or scroll to the bottom to get the bundle of all four designs at a discount!  READ MORE >>