Pubic Speaking Using Presentational Media

I have had a fairly recent experience with using presentational media-- in fact it was a few weeks ago and it was my first time using Power point. My organic chemistry class had to do a little project where we were each given a sugar to research, create a power point for, and present our findings for the class. I did my undergraduate work a long time ago. Specifically about 14 years ago. At that time there was no power point. I have been back in school for a few years but I have not had to do any projects using power point until this year. Needless to say I am a little behind the times. For my power point I was far too simple. I put my main points on my slides with no colors or bells and whistles. I did not know how to do any of the extra things, and I had very little time to put it together. I was not proud of my work! As for everyone else in the class there were lots of different styles of speaking and using power point. Now that I think of it it was a great way to see what works and what doesn't. Some people definitely overdid their power points. They used all the twirly, colorful, animated features and their content and speeches were lost due to the distraction. Then there were the people who had so much text that you couldn't possibly read it, and they were facing the screen reading it off of the slide for their entire speech. Also not very effective. The best presentations were the ones with just a few main bullets per slide, some sort of visual to make the content make more sense, and speakers who talked facing the audience and basically elaborated on what was on each slide. I feel much better this time around using power point, luckily my husband uses it for work all the time so he was able to help me figure out how to incorporate images and animations. Its easy to depend too much on presentational media and let it be your entire speech. I think in many ways it can detract or distract from what you have to say. Getting the right balance of reviewing your main points and having something visual to make your speech more interesting is the key to proper use of presentational media.