When looking ahead on our class schedule, I was looking forward to these classes. This week in our technology class we started on the subject of Power Point and I have a history with Power Point, brief as it may be. Then we watched the almost 4 minute clip of Don McMillan. Not only was he funny on all topics, but he was dead on correct. I found myself thinking of a lot of the Power Point presentations that I’ve heard or given, and McMillan was correct.
1 -People do read everything on the slides — word for word. Again this is because the presenter DOES NOT know all of their material.
2- He mentions using spell check. This is probably because of laziness.
3- Too many bullet points. These need to organized and split up into groups; again – know your information
4- Bad color schemes can ruin a presentation. The colors or background should have some connection with what you are presenting
5- Going along with the knowing your topic, the more words you fit on a single slide, the more difficult the slide is to read
6- Animations are good, but remember too many of a good thing is NOT good and become messy.
7- He then makes a joke about the font.
I can’t remember who mentioned it in class on Thursday, have to agree with him. When students are asked to use Power Point for one of the first few times, the students should choose the topic. Let the students choose a topic that they are comfortable and familiar with. I remember back in 7th grade at St. James School, our English teacher was explaining what we were to expect in high school and college. Note taking in lecture halls and presentations. She thought it was a good idea to get us familiar with the presentation format. So as a class, we each got to choose our own topics. It didn’t have to have anything to do with school, just as long as we were comfortable with the topic. I, of course, choose something to do with baseball — the equipment.
It wasn’t until I started thing about; what was I going to write about, until I put these two things together. I guess I didn’t give my 7th grade teacher enough credit.
As for Don McMillan’s comedy skit, I think this should be one of the first things shown in a technology class where Power Point is being taught or used. It shows a lot of what can be done and what can happen if it is used incorrectly. Out of those 7 points that McMillan spoke about, I think I have been guilty of about 5 of them. The two that do not apply to me are the Spell Check & Color Scheme. The color scheme one was actually told to one of our classes one of the first times we were asked to use Power Point.
~ good times.
