Flowers brighten up any room… that is already bright.

A local flower shop promises that flowers will brighten up any room,
but I doubt that they will do very much for my basement. I agree
that flowers would add a nice touch of color to a room that is
already neat and attractive, but flowers are not going to change a
room from drab to beautiful.

The same can be said for your PowerPoint presentation. It is a nice
way to illustrate a point, but PowerPoint won't save your
presentation. Content must come first, and once your content is
extraordinary, then PowerPoint can help you illustrate it. A bad
PowerPoint presentation will have the same impact as a bouquet of
dead flowers. It will be distracting at best and offensive at the
worst.

When you begin developing your next presentation, spend at least 90%
of your time developing the content. Decide what you need to teach
and figure out what would be the best way to teach it that involves
the most number of senses. We retain more of what we see, hear, and
feel.

Once the content is developed, then start thinking about how you can
illustrate it with your PowerPoint presentation. Here are some tips
to help you make your next PowerPoint presentation better:
1. Less is better: only one idea per slide, clearly
illustrated, and with as few words as possible.
2. The rule of sevens: only seven words per line, and only seven
lines per slide.
3. Pull important words out of the handout material to use on
your slides. Don't use PowerPoint as your outline and read from it
(a good cure for insomnia).
4. Animation can help illustrate a point, but is otherwise
distracting. Remember that the focus should be on you, not the wild
slides flying in and out.
5. Complex charts and graphs are better in a handout. They will
be too small to see on the screen, and are boring.
6. Like a bouquet of flowers, complementary colors are nice.
Avoid florescent or clashing colors. The idea is to make your slides
interesting, not obnoxious.
7. Trim it, prune it, and shape it for maximum impact.
Eliminate anything that doesn't help you teach the primary principles
of this lesson.
8. Avoid clip art! Use pictures instead. If you have a complex
concept to explain, use a picture and describe it with your
presentation.

PowerPoint can be an attractive way to illustrate your ideas when you
teach, but if it is not used correctly it will be distracting, and
eventually boring. The point of your teaching is the content. Spend
your time on the content and use PowerPoint to illustrate your most
important points and you will transform your next presentation from
ordinary to extraordinary.

Get more help with your PowerPoint presentations:
http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf

Best wishes,
David W. Woodruff, MSN, RN-BC, CNS, CEN
President, Ed4Nurses, Inc.
www.Ed4Nurses.com