Lesson 6: Presentations

Tejas: The inter-school competition where we have to create a presentation about computers is only 2 weeks away!

Moz: Yes, now that you havegathered,categorized all the information about computers, you should think about which application to use to create the presentation.

Jyoti: Our senior students keep saying they made “slides” for their project presentation. But we have never created one. What is involved in creating a presentation?

Moz: Suppose you want to write an essay, how do you gather your thoughts and plan for it?

Tejas: We read the topic, think about content that should go in the different parts of the essay : Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. Then we expand on each part.

Moz: As the essay is allowed to be verbose, you can cover all the content, but in presentations, if you write all the content, your audience will only be reading! What will you talk about?

Jyoti: Like we write an essay skeleton, what canwe write before creating a presentation?

Moz: Interesting analogy, for a presentation to be effective, you should first write the outline/structure of the presentation based on the Topic. The broad outline for any presentation can be :

. Overview of what is going to be presented

. Main points to be presented

. Conclusions/questions if any

Tejas: We have so much information about Computers now, looks like our presentation will have 100 pages!

Moz: The presentation does not have pages, but Slides. You can use any presentation application ( Power Point, Impress, Kpresenter…..) to create slides. You have already categorized the gathered information into the following categories :

  • Uses of Computers
  • History of Computers
  • Inside a Computer
  • Cost of Computers

On which category do you have to now prepare the presentation?

Jyoti: I will prepare on “Uses of Computers” and Tejas on “History of Computers”

INFO BOX:

  • Presentations can be used by Teachers, Students, Businessmen, Any working professional
  • Individual pages of a presentation are called Slides
  • Slides can contain Text, Images, Charts/Graphs, Tables , Video, Audio, Inserted files etc.
  • Slide content can be animated
  • Slides can look consistent by using templates
  • Slide content can be formatted just like the document content
  • Slides are presented by using an option called Slide show

END INFO BOX

Moz: Before we see theoutline for Jyoti’s presentation, let us see how to create a new presentation

SKILL BOX ( To be replaced by Ubuntu screen shots /options )

  1. Go To : File------Open new
  2. Select : Blank presentation
  3. Go to : Click to add title
  4. Enter the Title of the Slide
  5. Go To: Click to add content
  6. Enter the content text in the box

END SKILL BOX

Moz: Jyoti, can we see the first slide now?

Jyoti : Yes, I have already discovered formatting, fonts and color options in the presentation application and managed to use these options. This is how it looks.

Tejas: But the title is not readable and looks like you have used many fonts and colors !

Moz: Your observation is correct. There are some guidelines which you should follow while creating slides .

GUIDELINES BOX

Each slide shouldhave a title

Content in the slide should not be written in paragraphs

Each slide should ideally have not more than 5 points

Main points and sub points should be properly indented

The font used for the text should be uniform across the presentation

The title should have bigger font than the content in the slide

Not more than two colors should be used in a single slide………..(MORE CAN BE WRITTEN)

Check the content for spellings and grammar

If you are using content from the Internet, check for copyright, or give source of information

END GUIDELINES BOX

Jyoti: Ok. I will redo the slides. Here they are:

Moz: Good, looks like you have also explored how to use slide design templates . Let us now see the outline structure for Tejas.

Tejas: The first slide, outline slide and one slide for the 3rd-6th century is shown for History of Computers. I will now create the detailed slides based on the outline.

Jyoti: You have also used images and a Scale to show the dates in the slides.

Moz: The options available in Presentation application are very similar to what you find in the Word processing application. Tejas seems to have applied the existing knowledge to come up with the slides. One point to remember is that your text should be brief and only serve as a pointer to what you might want to talk during the presentation.

Tejas: We are now really eager to complete the presentations and go for the competition.

Moz: Sure, do remember the following points while presenting in front of an audience:

GUIDELINES BOX

Give a mock presentation in front of your teacher/friends before the actual presentation.

Time your presentation and see that you stick to the time allotted for you.

Use some anecdotes to make the session interesting.

Make the presentation interactive by calling for audience participation.

Ask questions and also allow the audience to ask questions. …..[more can be written]

Thank the audience

END GUIDELINES BOX

Moz: You can now explore on your own about how to animate the slides, include custom animation, record narration, rehearse timings , insert background images and various options available in the presentation software.

Jyoti: We have learnt to use new applications, but like Scratch programming in our earlier classes, we have not done any programming in this grade.

Moz: I am glad you noticed it, in the next class you will be introduced to a new topic called Flow charts and Programming .

END OF LESSON

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