PowerPoint Presentations

They are smart, sexy and easy to create using the latest Microsoft Office or Open Source software. While not many of your professors will be asking for papers on PowerPoint there are a number of creative ways the program can be used in different aspects of your life. The fields of math and science especially lend themselves to audio/visual presentation. Graphs, flow charts, and visual results of experiments are particularly effective point makers.

Rehearsed timings are a specifically useful tool if you are giving a live presentation, with PowerPoint recording the length of time you spend on each slide as you present the information. That recorded information determines the timing of the slide transitions in your actual presentation. Many of us have watched PowerPoint presentations with interest and perhaps a degree of awe at the technological skill for the shows creator, but the thing is, with the tools at your disposal anyone, that’s right anyone, can create awesome presentations as easily as you create your Word documents.

The most obvious presentation opportunities are, science presentations, speeches or online work but you needn’t limit yourself.  Consider asking your dissertation panel for permission to present some of your argument in PowerPoint to add polish and professionalism. Same goes for seeking consideration into a program, your CV would be cluttered with too much detail but an online application could be greatly enhanced with a video showing your accomplishments, particularly if you have some good field research footage to share.

It is now pretty much standard that professors and employers who are thinking of taking you on will do a Google and social network search. Consider creating online content that will tell them so much more than who your friends are, and there a number of sites that will host your content free of charge. Squidoo is the one that comes to mind first but certainly there are others, including of course your social networking pages.