Published: February 28, 2006
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Published: February 28, 2006
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Giving a presentation can be both exciting and nerve-wracking. Getting your point across by delivering a stimulating presentation that maintains your audience’s attention can be a challenge. In this article, you’ll learn how to keep your audience’s attention by using the interactive features of a Tablet PC and Microsoft Office PowerPoint.
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Use Ink to Emphasize Specific Points |
Use Ink to Emphasize Specific Points
Using your Tablet PC, you can use the stylus to write, sketch, circle, or add notes during your presentation to emphasize important points. For example, you can draw attention to something specific on the slide, like an upward trend on a graph, by using the stylus to draw, circle, or highlight the area. You can select pointer options including an arrow, ballpoint pen, felt tip pen, and highlighter. In the figure below, for example, a hard-to-find subcategory is circled. Without the pen, it would be more difficult to point out.
Use the ink options to write on your slides, or, to allow others to.
You can also use ink to keep the audience focused. While projecting the presentation on a large screen, you can use the Tablet PC to:
| • | Circle important information while giving the presentation. This draws attention to key points. |
| • | Take handwritten notes on the presentation so that everyone can see. Add comments suggested by your audience to make it more interactive. |
| • | Quickly draw sketches or schematics to illustrate ideas. As people comment on your presentation, use the Tablet to quickly sketch their suggestions, be it a new product design, improvements on an existing design, or company reorganization. Later you can more formally record the design. |
| • | Incorporate hyperlinks into your slides. During the presentation, you can click on the link to bring up the site, use Snipping Tool capture a portion of the site, and paste it directly into the slides. |
How to Add Ink Annotations
When adding ink to your presentation, there are several writing instruments and ink colors from which to choose. Use different options during your presentation for variety and to keep your audience’s attention
To use ink during a presentation while in slide show mode, mouse-over the lower left corner. Four translucent buttons will appear: previous slide, add ink annotation, bring up the shortcut menu options, and next slide.
You can also right-click any slide while in Slide Show mode to bring up the shortcut menu options.
To select an ink color to write on your PowerPoint slide:
| 1. | Open your PowerPoint presentation. |
Give Better Small Group Presentations
Tablet PCs come in slate models as well as convertible models that have screens that swivel. When presenting to a small group at a conference table using a slate model, you can easily hold it up with one hand and use the pen in the other to annotate slides. This delivers a more personal presentation. When using a convertible model, you can reposition it so that the keyboard is behind the screen, bringing your audience closer to the content.
Use the Tablet PC to create interactive, engaging presentations.
Get the Audience Involved: Invite Them Write on Your Slides
To engage your audience even more, disconnect the Tablet PC from the power supply and any attached peripherals such as the large presentation screen. Pass the Tablet around the room with a stylus. In doing so, you can allow audience members to write or draw their own ideas. If a wireless Bluetooth projector is being used, their mark-ups can be projected on a screen. Otherwise, the Tablet can be reconnected to the projector for public display.
You can ask for volunteers, or have each group represent their product. This will help keep your audience’s attention, and make for a memorable, interactive presentation.
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Joli Ballew Joli Ballew is a technology trainer and writer in the Dallas area. She holds several certifications including MCSE, A+, and MCDST. In addition to writing, she teaches computer classes at the local junior college, and works as a network administrator and Web designer for North Texas Graphics. Joli has almost 20 books available, including Degunking Windows (voted best computer book of the year by the Independent Publishers Book Awards in 2005), Degunking Your PC, Degunking Your Mac, and Degunking Your Mac Tiger Edition (Paraglyph Press), Hardcore Windows XP (McGraw-Hill), and Windows XP: Do Amazing Things (Microsoft Press). Joli also writes for Microsoft’s Windows XP Expert Zone, is a Microsoft blogger, and has written a textbook for Microsoft’s MCDST certification. In her free time, Joli enjoys golfing, yard work, and teaching her cat, Nikko, new tricks. |
