Power Point Presentations

This paper will illustrate the skills I have learned throughout this course and how I will us these skills towards the achievement of my Master's degree and in my professional career. I will talk about three of the skills that have interested me the most. The three skills I have learned are Power Point, research, and time management.

One of the topics I found to be truly rewarding in this course was the use of Power Point presentations. I had used Power Point in the past but this course caused me to "Think outside the slide." This is a site I found while researching some more information on Power Point and how to use it more effectively. thinkoutsidetheslide.com offers 10 "secrets for using Power Point in the most effective manner to present meaningful, memorable, and professional slide presentations for the business professional. I'll take this time to paraphrase some of the tips that Dave Paradi, thinkoustidetheslide.com owner, suggests in hopes of highlighting some of the information I learned to enhance my presentation skills.

1. Create an outline. The most important part of the presentation is the content. As with written communication, presentations must be clearly organized and your message must be properly structured so that your intent or meaning is clearly understood. This site suggests that you use sticky notes, with your main topics and talking points, so that you can move them around and arrange them in the proper order.

2. Use contrasting colors. You want your message to stand out on the background so that it grabs the audiences attention. It is suggested that you use a dark background with white or yellow letters or vice-verse. This site also offers a color contrast calculator that I found to be quite helpful.

3. Use big enough font. The author suggests 28-32 for text and 36-44 for titles. This has always been a struggle for me. I never knew what font size might be the correct size but this helps. I also learned that room size and screen size play an important role in font selection as well. Additionally, font size should complement any type of graphics you may be using on your presentation.

4. Draw on the screen during presentation. I never knew you could do this and after reading about it I can see how effective it can be in getting the audience to focus on your presentation and absorb the information in a more effective manner. To do this you simply press the Ctrl-P key combination to display a pen on the screen. Then, using the left mouse button, draw on the slide as you wish. To erase what you have drawn, press the E key. To hide the pen, press the A key or the Ctrl-H key combination. (Paradi )

5. Don't use moving text. I have to agree with this as nothing bugs me more than words that move in from the left or flash on the screen. I understand that some presenters may feel that it's a good way to grab attention but it's my opinion that the audience pays too much attention on what is going on and not the message.

6. Use visuals instead of text. This secret makes a lot of sense to me as it's been said that most people are visual people and will retain visual information more readily than verbal or written information. Paradi validates this secret with some valid research. He conducted a survey at one of his conferences and asked the crowd what annoys them most about Power Point. The audience overwhelmingly stated the overload of text.

Paradi goes on to mention some other secrets for successful Power Point such as blanking the screen to reinforce a point, using three identical slides at the end of the presentation so you don't advance too far and unknowingly end your presentation, and of course, shutting off the pointer.

This is information I would never considered and without this course, I would have never known. I will use this information in pursuit of both my Master's degree and professional life as well.

I also learned how to properly research information for well written papers. What is research? Research, or legitimate research is, patient repetition, careful filtering, and diligent citing of articles, all with a critical and skeptical mindset that separates drivel from useful content. You have to decide whether the topic is a hard research, soft research, or both.

Hard research is research would be something along the lines of scientific, legal or some sort of more convincing type research. This type or research requires solid referencing and must have solid and relevant facts. All facts, graphs, visual information, and any other measurable information must be exact and truthful. I would relate this type of research to the type of research a lawyer might conduct to prove a case or perhaps an engineering professional might conduct to demonstrate why a structure had failed and what led to the failure.

Soft research is research which is more opinionated and subjective. This reminds me of the type of research needed for a persuasive speech. The information gathered would