delivers a short sketch about the misuse and abuse of PowerPoint. As a professional who probably uses Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote regularly, it's a good idea to avoid the mistakes Don outlines in his comic routine. If you have students use slideshows as visual aids in classroom presentations, it's important to teach them about what makes good and bad slideshows. Watch the four-minute
In just a few minutes, Don hits on so many slideshow blunders. Don starts his sketch with a slide with the following paragraph written on it, and he reads it aloud:
"People tend to put every word they are going to say on their PowerPoint slides. Although this eliminates the need to memorize your talk, ultimately this makes your slides crowded, wordy, and boring. You will lose your audience's attention before you reach the bottom of your first slide."
I've recently written here on the Arizona K12 Center's blog how to use Presenter Notes to improve your slideshow presentations. Often slides can be simplified by moving text from slides and placing them in the Presenter Notes section. This way the speaker can see his or her notes, and the audience is spared slides full of text.
Don mentions that many people do not run spell check on their slides. Presenters should always review their slides and certainly correct words underlined in red. Note that when in Presentation or Play mode, PowerPoint does not underline misspellings. You must view slides in the Edit mode to see those red and green underlines.
The sketch has a fun visual that makes the point to avoid excessive bullet points. Presenters should include only key points in a bulleted list. If you have too many bullets, your key messages won't stand out. The comedian jokes, "The term bullet point comes from people firing guns at annoying presenters." I prefer to make each possible bullet point its own slide and perhaps paired with an illustration. Using this approach, my presentations often do not contain any bulleted information. After all, it doesn't cost extra to add slides.
Another thing to avoid are bad color schemes. Clashing colors not only look unprofessional, they can make slides difficult to read. There is plenty of help online for creating color schemes. I tend to stick with either white or black backgrounds with contrasting font colors.
Presenters often try to include too much data on a slide. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to read and understand. It's better to simplify graphs and charts to illustrate your point.
Don also mentions that there is a danger of having too many animations. Presenters will lose their audience's focus if they are concentrating on the animations instead of the content. It's best to avoid pointless motion.
I do disagree with the comedian's statement, "The number of PowerPoint slides you have in your talk, the less useful your talk actually is." Sure, long drawn-out presentations are no fun for anyone. However, having a large number of slides doesn't mean that the presentation is longer than necessary. Usually for an hour presentation I'll have over 100 slides. Those slides are on the screen for an average of 30 seconds each. Many of the slides contain a few words or just an image as a visual aid to what I am speaking about.
By laughing at something that has frustrated us all, Don McMillan highlights PowerPoint mistakes that drive us crazy. Learn from those mistakes and try not to make them yourself. Want to view the video again? It is also on Youtube
