Slideshow Presentation Hacks

Do your slides still look something like the ones on the left? The slides on the right were made using the same content.

      They say impressions are made within the first sixty seconds of meeting someone. The end of this school year marks a fresh start, especially for our incoming middle schoolers and rising highschoolers. It is important to create a strong impression on your teachers for the beginning of the year. 

Middle school is a critical time for many students who look to change schools, get into programs, grow their talents, or take accelerated classes next year. There is one common theme necessary to succeed in all of these: presentations. From a science project on astronomy to speaking in front of a crowd, every student needs to know how to captivate their audience (or teachers) through their slideshows. Something as simple as a slideshow can deeply illustrate your effort, creativity, and skill. To build a solid foundation for high school, middle schoolers need to start sharpening these skills now. Continue reading to discover eight slide-enhancing hacks every student should know.

1. Transitions: Transitions can be used between various slides and can easily enhance your slideshow presentation. Even a simple fade between your slides or structured layer of your body text can make a presentation more engaging. Audiences prefer staring at interactive things over stationary things.

2. Music and Videos: From experience, I know that at some point in your life, you will need to incorporate a video into your slideshow. YouTube videos are easily supported in slideshows and can be added by going to insert > video. Another use for videos is music: simply choose a song from YouTube and minimize the video image on slides. Lounge music is a strong choice for introduction slides.

3. Color scheming: It is important to choose text, image, and background colors that fit to a certain theme. A bright pink font on a pastel-yellow background may not be the way to go for your project on ancient civilizations. Perhaps a muted beige in the background with dark brown or black text would draw more attention to the actual information while still matching the historic theme.

4. Font selection: It gets boring staring at the same, basic, Arial font on a presentation. By mixing things up, your slides will appear more formal and thoughtful. The best way to do this is have a casual, legible, and simple font for the main body text, like Times New Roman. For the headings and titles, choose a more decorative and eye-catching font, like Pacifico.

5. Themed templates: Sometimes, it’s better to leave the slides to the pros so that you can focus on the content instead of the design. Websites such as Slidesgo, Slides Carnival, and Canva have pre-made templates customized for various themes. Using these templates can save you lots of time by doing the decorative work for you, while still giving you full control over your presentation!  

6. Quality Images: It can be difficult to find the perfect image online. Luckily, there is a solution that can turn any image into something worthy of your presentation! If you want to use a picture that is too blurry or hazy, go to unblurimage.ai to clear it up! If you want to remove the background of an image to make it a PNG, go to remove.bg to manually erase or have AI remove your background.

7. Speaker notes: A big tip for presentations: don’t read off of the slides. Audiences like being spoken to, not read to. So, if you want to face away from the board while still knowing what to say, try writing some bullet points to yourself in Google Slides’ speaker notes section at the bottom of the screen. While you present, you can pull these speaker notes up in a little pop-up window to give you a little hint when you need it. Or, if you do not have access to the presenting computer, the speaker notes can help you practice memorizing your slides beforehand!

8. Icons: If you choose to make your own slides, filling up the space with something other than words can be a little difficult. Websites like The Noun Project and Flaticon provide free images of all styles, perfect for decorating your slides, fit to your theme!

If this article helped you, consider reading my article about digital organization tips with free Docs templates of virtual planners, schedules, calendars, and more!