Here are tips to enhance your teaching when using PowerPoint slides:
1. Focus on your intent in teaching.
How will the slides assist your teaching and the learning
of the students?
What objectives do you intend the students to achieve?
What will the format/outline of the lesson be?
2. Slides complement teaching.
The PowerPoint slides do not teach; you do.
The slides are a complement to and an enhancement of your
teaching.
3. Plan ahead.
Plan your teaching ahead of time and use the slides to help
organize yourself.
Put the appropriate number of slides in for the amount of
time you have.
Use the slides to offer the objectives for the lesson
Use the slides to offer the organizational plan or outline
of the lesson.
Plan activities (talk, demonstrations, questions,
discussions, applications) that are prompted by slides
Include diagrams, or other visuals where appropriate
Consider the rule of thumb: 1 slide per 1-2 minutes
as a guideline, or select the slides intentionally to lead into planned amounts
of minutes.
4. Use points that are signals or cues.
Do not write down on the PowerPoint slides everything that
you plan to say.
Leave spaces for students to think, listen to you or
others, or to write down ideas and further concepts as notes.
5. Avoid reading your slides.
Invite students into the discussion or the struggle to
understand:
Use point form, questions or organizers and a blank slide to promote talk about
concepts, rather than reading them
Refer to the slides, and then look away and discuss the
concepts
Face the students and speak to them!
6. Use slides for effective teaching techniques.
Illustrate or reinforce difficult or complex ideas
Show specific examples of general concepts
Demonstrate the steps of a process
Show spatial or visual relationships
Pose provocative questions
Stimulate and captivate interest.
7. Pause for understanding.
Pause to let students read and respond to a slide and take
notes if necessary
Give time for students to read all slides.
8. Use organizers to let students know where you are in the talk.
Come back to the organizers or outline of the lesson
periodically as inserts to remind the students where you are in the lesson.
9. Review objectives at the end of the session.
Go back to your original objectives to ensure that you have
accomplished what you set out to, and to conclude the class.
10. Dont be imprisoned by the computer.
Move around, by using a remote mouse
A laser pointer is useful to point to parts of a diagram or
key phrases.
11. Practise using the technology ahead of class.
Become familiar with setting up the projector, the screen,
the laptop, the remote mouse, and any data storage devices.
12. If you provide handouts of slides:
Leave space for students notes
Offer additional information in your talk
Upload slides or provide access to them well ahead of your
talk
Students can access slides during session, without paper
copy
Create a black and white pdf for easy printing.
13. Continue to use effective teaching techniques with slides.
The slides are an aid to your teaching
Continue to use discussion, questioning, using effective
explanation techniques such as analogy or example, and activities to engage
students in conjunction with your PowerPoint slides
Dont read your notes.
14. Useful PowerPoint Techniques:
Stagger revelations of one idea or statement at a time, or
a list (use animation scheme)
Run a slide show as students arrive
Capture screens from other applications
Link to a web site
Insert a video clip
15. Helpful Commands Techniques
These will help you manipulate your slides to obtain effects you need: RIGHT ARROW
Go to next slide or perform next animation
LEFT ARROW
Go to previous slide or animation
<number> + RETURN Go to slide <number>
B
Display
black screen (or return to slide show from black)
W
Display white
screen (or return to slide show from a white)
S
Stop or restart an automatic
slide show
ESC
End a slide show
E
Erase
on-screen annotations
H
Go
to next hidden slide if the next slide is hidden
A
Show or hide
arrow pointer
