Presentation Skills

In the B.Ed Program you are going to give lots of presentations, and you should know the important features of a presentation that help you do well.

From public domain clip art

Presentation Basics

-Good clear speech

-Good eye contact with the audience

-Good body posture that shows you are serious.

-Speaking in an academic, comfortable and fluent manner -- this means NO reading from slides.

-Have a clear stages of your presentation: Beginning, middle, and end.

-Make sure to use clear transitions as you move from one point to another. Enumeration (firstly, secondly,) works very well.

--Remember that it is very important to rehearse your presentation several times. This way you feel more comfortable when you get up there to speak. I recommend recording yourself audio/visual if possible. This way you can review and reflect on your strengths and weaknesses.

--Memorization is not an effective way to deliver a presentation.

Qualities of Good Speaking

Slide Show Basics

-Should be a simple, professional style: This means no flowers, fancy bright colors or other irrelevant images. All images should be associated with the content of the presentation.

-Use images but make sure they are of a high quality pixel rate and make sure acknowledge where you got the image. These two locations are great places to get Public Domain images that need no reference. Simply link the image to the location you got it from.

-Colors and font style should be chosen carefully: Make sure the color of the background and the font are a good match.

-Bullet points only so the audience listens to you without reading the slides. The focus of the presentation is YOU. The slides are there to help you. In addition, the slideshow is such that a person would NOT know what the presentation is about with out you to deliver the speech.

-Be careful not to have too much information on a slide.

-Be careful not to have too little information on a slide.

-Stay away from fancy(meaningless) transitions. Sound, bells, whistles -- they are distracting.

-If you use a video, make sure it is short, sweet and too the point. Maybe one or two minutes, maximum. However, check with your instructor.