1.Present and not just read the slides: Slides are only a helping hand which contains a basic point or headline. Avoid writing long paragraphs onto the slide. The slides shouldn’t communicate the entirety to audience – if that is the case, you have no role to play in the hall, the audience can read it for themselves.
2.Slides should be brief: Typically a single Power Point Slide shouldn’t contain more than 1 or 2 images and not more than 5 to 6 points. Remember MS Word is a better tool to write pages and essays and Power Point is a bad tool to write long paragraphs.
3.Slide background should be of light colour. Remember that projectors don’t show colour as great as your monitor and from a distance dark colour fonts appear on a light background appear clearer.
4. Follow one format for all the slides: Reduce the number of times, you do changes to fonts and colours on individual slides.
5.Don’t encourage taking questions during the talk. Announce to audience at the start, that you will take all questions at the end. Taking questions in-between, normally interrupts your flow and regaining your position is very difficult.
6.Never get into an argument or a lengthy discussion.
7.Never let a question be answered by a member of audience. If you do it, then you will completely loose the audience and it will become a discussion session. You are the boss during your presentation so ascertain your rights.
8.If you get a question for which you are unsure of, politely say that you need to check on the facts before answering. Ask them to speak to you after session or tell them that you will check and email them back.
9.10-20-30 Rule :This is a slideshow rule offered by Guy Kawasaki. This rule states that a ppt slide should have no more than 10 slides, last no longer than 20 minutes and have no text less than 30 point font. He says it doesn’t matter whether your idea will revolutionize the world, you need to spell out the important nuggets in a few minutes minutes, a couple slides and a several words a slide.
10.Be Entertaining :Speeches should be entertaining and informative. I’m not saying you should act like a dancing monkey when giving a serious presentation. But unlike an e-mail or article, people expect some appeal to there emotions. Simply reciting dry facts without any passion or humor will make people less likely to pay attention.
11.Slow Down : Nervous and inexperienced speakers tend to talk way to fast. Consciously slow your speech down and add pauses for emphasis.
12.Eye Contact :Match eye contact with everyone in the room.
13.“That’s a Good Question” - You can use statements like, “that’s a really good question,” or “I’m glad you asked me that,” to buy yourself a few moments to organize your response. Will the other people in the audience know you are using these filler sentences to reorder your thoughts? Probably not. And even if they do, it still makes the presentation more smooth than um’s and ah’s littering your answer.
14.Breathe In Not Out : Feeling the urge to use presentation killers like ‘um,’ ‘ah,’ or ‘you know’? Replace those with a pause taking a short breath in. The pause may seem a bit awkward, but the audience will barely notice it.
15.Do Apologize if You’re Wrong
16.Put Yourself in the Audience : When writing a speech, see it from the audiences perspective. What might they not understand? What might seem boring? Use WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) to guide you.
17.Have Fun :Don’t forget to have a smile on your face while presenting.Keep your cool and don’t be nervous.Confidence is judged more than the content sometimes as content these days are easily available on the internet.So a teacher will be looking more keenly at the way you present.