State Education Finance Plan PP

PowerPoint Suggestions

In my +20 years working in higher education here in South Florida, I have presented many PowerPoint presentations in my courses and at professional conferences. By trial-and-error and the observation of other presenters primarily, I have learned a few tricks of the trade that have enhanced my skills with this type of communication/information dissemination that you may want to consider as you prepare your PowerPoint presentation for the Module 7 Assignment.

1) Don't overload any slide with too much information. When you have to resort to using a smaller font size to get everything on a slide, that could be a warning that this is occurring.

2) Make sure the color of your type is in sharp contrast with any background. Yellow print against an orange background is probably not a good idea, while black print would probably be much better.

3) Make very sure that there are no errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. This is very important since normally there is an audience present for PowerPoint presentations. I especially will be keeping my eye out for this when evaluating your PowerPoint presentations. You may want to consider having someone proofread your PowerPoint before submitting it to me.

4) Be creative and colorful as you want while you prepare your slides, but being too much may detract from the audience trying to read the information that is contained within the slide. It is a matter of balance.

5) It is fine to include some audio/visual clips within your presentation, if you wish. However, depending on their length, they may slow down substantially the downloading or uploading of your presentation. Thus, audio/visual clips should be used selectively or not at all.

6) Make sure that the information about your state’s funding of public schools is the most current available. Relying on the information about your state’s funding program found in your course textbook is NOT CURRENT, thus don’t include it in your PowerPoint presentation. Relying on my series of handouts entitled Florida State Funding of School Districts #1 - #8 is CURRENT, thus use it if you are reporting on Florida. Keep in mind that how states fund their public school systems is never the same from year-to-year and is constantly changing. I will be especially watchful of how current your information is when evaluating your PowerPoint presentations.

For additional information on this topic, there are many videos on YouTube that can be viewed.  But if you keep in mind these few tips of mine, I believe that your final product will be enhanced.

Dr. Gaffney