The Importance of PowerPoint presentations and My Presentation Topic

It seems we have a lot to cover in this blog entry...

I think the articles really helped me in understanding how to make a great PowerPoint. I like how they used some bad examples to help balance out the good sides, some of which were common mistakes that I often used without knowing they were bad.

Five guidlines that I think are important when making an effective PowerPoint presentation for myself and for my classmates:
1) A clean and simple background with easy to read font is greatly appreciated (no wacky or extremely harsh colors for either the background or the font; otherwise, the audience will literally cringe and hesitate to look at the slides)
2) Make the topic simple to understand through use of images/graphs/a little animation if necessary to get the point across
3) A few website links to help furthur develop your discussion on the topic are great helpers, too
4) Don't just read the presentation; memorize it slightly, refer to it as needed to help you as the teacher/boss/employee/whatever get your point across effectively
And finally,
5) Using too many graphics clutters up the screen, something I learned the hard way when I was in middle school and my teacher gave me a bad grade on a computer assignment for having too many cliparts in it

I think for my Presentation Topic, since I am a history major, I want to give a presentation about Leonardo DaVinci or Raphael. They are some of history's most famous painters, and the fact that their works still exist today and are revered as masterpieces simply astounds me. I want to talk about their art and how they were considered "revolutionary" and "brilliant" during their times.

Mr. Nolan's Presentation and Legal Photo Use

I liked Mr. Nolan's presentation today about the use of search engines and the validity of websites. What suprised me was that I didn't know that even with a .gov/.org/.edu tag at the end of a website link, it does not automatically make the website credible. I guess I have always had good luck in finding credible websites, but now I will definetely be more careful. Something new that I found out was that mass media sites are more likely to be found at the top of a results page from a search engine, rather than the more scholarly websites. That really intrigued me because it simply means that those websites won a "popularity contest" of sorts, and the more studious and "nerdy" websites are found on the lower ranks of the search engine.

In concern with the article, I'm surprised that the father had to go through so many managers and lawyers and other professionals to argue his case against the magazine for rights of a photo of his son. They gave his $4000 as a form of an apology, but not a direct apology itself, which was rather rude of them, I think. Unfortunately, people who work in customer services nowadays are not really friendly, so for him to have to go through all that work without an apology would be upsetting to anyone.

Power Point Presentations

Power Point Presentations.....say that three times fast!

I think that Power Points, to make them effective, they need to be brief, clean (not a lot of animations), and the instructor needs to study the slides in order to be able to teach class well. My history professor uses Power Point slides every day to show us pictures, brief facts, and important names/dates. It says on one of the links that a lot of "white space" or "negative space" is a good thing, and I completely agree. Even if the slides have a simple but interesting background, a lot of negative space is a good thing to keep the audience's attention on the content of the slide. Also, slides create the mood for the presentation to have its greatest effect. My teacher uses a simple and clean design for the classroom, so as to rely on herself to keep her students' attention.