Tech Tuesdays: Creating Awesome Presentation Slides

On behalf of the Student Affairs Technology Committee, we are pleased to be offering professional development on various technology topics every Tuesday this summer, thanks to the Atomic Learning platform that BSU has a license for! Atomic Learning is an online learning platform that you can access at your own convenience.

Today’s topic is about creating awesome presentation slides for all those presentations you may be making at some point for our students, staff, and/or faculty. Two books that I highly recommend you read and utilize are Slideology by Nancy Duarte and Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. Additionally, we recommend utilizing Canva as a way to help create some image focused slides for your presentations. Check out this great tutorial video for a quick lesson.

Once you’ve had a chance to check out that content, its time to start building some awesome presentation slide decks. Whether you have a lot of experience in creating presentations or just starting out, we recommend accessing the Atomic Learning modules below.

In order to access the Atomic Learning platform, please click here to log in. Once you are logged in, click on any of the following modules:

• Effective Presentation Design: There are some bad presentations out there, but yours won’t be one of them after watching this online training workshop on designing an effective presentation.  In addition to looking at some things that go into visual presentations, you’ll take a look at why color is important, why big photos are good, and why clip art isn’t. You’ll also learn more about how good storytelling is at the heart of a good presentation, and how you can structure and organize your presentation and handouts to most effectively communicate your idea to your intended audience.
• PowerPoint: Microsoft^® Office PowerPoint^® 2007 enables users to quickly create high-impact, dynamic presentations, while integrating workflow and ways to easily share information. From the redesigned user interface to the new graphics and formatting capabilities, Office PowerPoint 2007 puts the control in your hands to create great-looking presentations.
• Prezi: Prezi is a Web-based presentation application and storytelling tool that uses a single, infinite canvas instead of traditional slides. In this online training series, you’ll learn how to create non-linear presentations, zoom in and out of a visual map, create a path through different objects, add 3D backgrounds, add frames to represent the order of the information to be presented and publish your Prezi.
• Keynote: Keynote®, part of Apple’s® suite of applications called iWork®, makes it easy to create high-quality presentations. This online training series will help you use the tools and effects of Keynote to tell your story effectively and dramatically.
• Google Slides: In this online training series, you will learn to create a new presentation and assign a theme using Google™ Presentations. This training covers how to add, organize and delete slides in a presentation and how to insert text boxes, images, and shapes. You will learn to work with animations and transitions, and how to view a presentation.

We hope that this information helps make your next presentation stronger!

Next week, we will cover “Scheduling Meetings With Colleagues On and Off Campus” which will provide information on Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar and other related technology!