how to make a school presentation fun

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75 Unique School Presentation Ideas and Topics Plus Templates

Are you tired of seeing the same PowerPoints repeating overused and unoriginal school presentation ideas covering repeated topics in your classes?

You know what I’m talking about; we’ve all been there, and sat through yawn-worthy demonstrations, slides, or presentation videos covering everything from the solar system, someone’s favorite pet, past presidents of a country, to why E=mC squared.

From grade school to university, first graders to college students, we are obligated to create, perform, and observe academic presentations across a plethora of curriculums and classes, and not all of these public speaking opportunities fall into the category of an ‘interesting topic’.

Yet, have no fear! Here at Piktochart, we are here to help you and your classmates. From giving examples of creative and even interactive presentation ideas, providing presentation videos , and suggesting interactive activities to give your five minutes of fame the ‘wow’ factor that it deserves, this article is your guide!

Our massive collection of unique school and college presentation ideas and templates applies if you’re:

• A teacher looking to make your class more engaging and fun with student presentations.
• A student who wants to impress your teacher and the rest of the class with a thought-provoking, interesting topic.

A Curated List of Interesting Topics for School Presentations

Did you know that when it comes to presentations , the more students involved improves retention? The more you know! Yet sometimes, you need a little help to get the wheels moving in your head for your next school presentation .

The great thing about these ideas and topics is you can present them either in face-to-face classes or virtual learning sessions.

Each school presentation idea or topic below also comes with a template that you can use. Create a free Piktochart account to try our presentation maker and get access to the high-quality version of the templates. You can also check out our Piktochart for Education plan .

Want to watch this blog post in video format? The video below is for you!

The templates are further divided into the following categories covering the most popular and best presentation topics. Click the links below to skip to a specific section.

• Unique science presentation topics to cultivate curiosity in class
• Engaging culture and history presentation ideas to draw inspiration from
• Health class presentation topics to help students make healthy lifestyle decisions
• Data visualization ideas to help students present an overwhelming amount of data and information into clear, engaging visuals
• First day of school activity ideas to foster classroom camaraderie
• Communication and media topics to teach students the importance of effective communication
• Topics to help students prepare for life after school

We hope this list will inspire you and help you nail your next school presentation activity.

Unique Science Presentation Topics to Cultivate Curiosity in Class

Science is a broad field and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with too many topics to choose for your next presentation.

Cultivate curiosity in the science classroom with the following unique and creative presentation ideas and topics:

1. Can life survive in space?

2. Do plants scream when they’re in pain?

3. What are the traits of successful inventors?

4. How vaccines work

5. Massive destruction of the Koala’s habitat in Australia

6. Left brain versus right brain

7. What are great sources of calcium?

8. Recycling facts you need to know

9. Do you have what it takes to be a NASA astronaut?

10. The rise of robots and AI: Should we be afraid of them?

11. How far down does the sea go?

12. The stages of sleep

13. Will Mars be our home in 2028?

14. A quick look at laboratory safety rules

15. The first person in history to break the sound barrier

Engaging Culture and History Presentation Ideas to Draw Inspiration From

History is filled with equally inspiring and terrifying stories, and there are lessons that students can learn from the events of the past. Meanwhile, interactive presentations about culture help students learn and embrace diversity. 

16. Women in history: A conversation through time

17. The sweet story of chocolate 

18. A history lesson with a twist 

19. The history of basketball 

20. The origin of the Halloween celebration 

21. AI History 

22. What you need to know about New Zealand 

23. 1883 volcanic eruption of Krakatoa 

24. Roman structures: 2000 years of strength

25. The most famous art heists in history 

26. Elmo: The story behind a child icon 

27. 10 things you should know before you visit South Korea 

28. 8 things you didn’t know about these 8 countries 

Health Class Presentation Topics to Help Students Make Healthy Lifestyle Decisions

Want to learn how to engage students with healthcare topic ideas? Then consider using these templates for your next interactive presentation.

According to the CDC , school-based health education contributes to the development of functional health knowledge among students. It also helps them adapt and maintain health-promoting behaviors throughout their lives. 

Not only will your presentation help with keeping students engaged, but you’ll also increase class involvement with the right slides.

The following examples of health and wellness interactive presentations include fun ideas and topics that are a good start. 

29. How to look after your mental health?

30. The eradication of Polio

31. How to have a healthy lifestyle 

32. 10 handwashing facts 

33. Myths and facts about depression

34. Hacks for making fresh food last longer 

35. Ways to avoid spreading the coronavirus

36. Mask protection in 5 simple steps 

37. Everything you need to know about the flu

38. All about stress: Prevention, tips, and how to cope 

39. The importance of sleep 

40. Is milk tea bad for you?

41. How to boost happiness in 10 minutes

42. How dirty are debit and credit cards 

43. Why do you need sunscreen protection

Data Visualization Ideas to Help Students Present Overwhelming Amounts of Data in Creative Ways

Data visualization is all about using visuals to make sense of data. Students need to pull the main points from their extensive research, and present them by story telling while being mindful of their classmates’ collective attention span.

As far as student assignments go, storytelling with data is a daunting task for students and teachers alike. To keep your audience interested, consider using a non linear presentation that presents key concepts in creative ways.

Inspire your class to be master data storytellers with the following data visualization ideas:

44. Are we slowly losing the Borneo rainforest?

45. Skateboard deck design over the years

46. Food waste during the Super Bowl

47. The weight of the tallest building in the world

48. Infographic about data and statistics

49. Stats about cyberbullying

50. How whales combat climate change

First Day of School Interactive Activity Ideas to Foster Whole-class-Camaraderie

Calling all teachers! Welcome your new students and start the school year with the following back-to-school creative presentation ideas and relevant templates for first-day-of-school activities.

These interactive presentations grab the attention of your students and are remarkably easy to execute (which is the main educator’s goal after all)!

51. Meet the teacher

52. Example: all about me

53. Self-introduction

54. Tips on how to focus on schoolwork

55. Course plan and schedule

Give our class schedule maker a try to access more templates for free. You can also access our presentation-maker , poster-maker , timeline-maker , and more by simply signing up .

56. Interpreting a student’s report card (for parents)

57. Introduction of classroom rules

58. Assignment schedule

59. Daily planner

60. Course syllabus presentation

61. How to write a class presentation

Topics to Teach Students the Importance of Effective Communication

Visual media  helps students retain more of the concepts  taught in the classroom. The following media topics and infographic templates can help you showcase complex concepts in a short amount of time. 

In addition, interactive presentation activities using these templates also encourage the development of a holistic learning process in the classroom because they help focus on the  three domains of learning:  cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. 

62. Interactive presentation do’s and don’ts 

63. How to create an infographic 

Recommended reading : How to Make an Infographic in 30 Minutes

64. How to improve your internet security and privacy

65. What is design thinking?

66. What are your favorite software tools to use in the classroom? 

Presentation Topic Ideas to Help Students Prepare for Life After School

One of the things that makes teaching a rewarding career is seeing your students take the learning and knowledge you’ve instilled in them, and become successful, productive adults.

From pitching a business idea to starting your podcast, the following topics are good starting points to prepare students for the challenges after graduation (aka adulting 101):

67. How to make a resume

68. How to start a startup

69. Credit card vs. debit card

70. Pros and cons of cryptocurrency

71. How to save on travel

72. How to do a SWOT analysis

73. How to pitch a business idea

74. Habits of successful people

75. Starting your own podcast: A checklist

Find out how a high school teacher like Jamie Barkin uses Piktochart to improve learning in the classroom for her students.

Pro tip: make your presentation as interactive as possible. Students have an attention span of two to three minutes per year of age. To keep minds from wandering off, include some interactive games or activities in the lesson. For example, if you conducted a lesson on the respiratory system, you could ask them to practice breathing techniques.

Maintain eye contact with your students, and you’ll get instant feedback on how interested they are in the interactive presentation.

Make School Presentation Visuals Without the Hassle of Making Them From Scratch

School presentations, when done right, can help teachers engage their classes and improve students’ education effectively by presenting information using the right presentation topic. 

If you’re pressed for time and resources to make your school presentation visuals , choose a template from Piktochart’s template gallery . Aside from the easy customization options, you can also print and download these templates to your preferred format. 

Piktochart also professional templates to create infographics , posters , brochures , reports , and more.

Creating school-focused, engaging, and interactive presentations can be tedious at first, but with a little bit of research and Piktochart’s handy templates, you’re going to do a great job!

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Try These 160 Insanely Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Your Next Presentation

Ausbert Generoso

In the modern-day PowerPoint presenting, slide decks don’t just inform, but also entertain and spark joy. PowerPoint shouldn’t just be confined to the monotony of bullet points and charts, but rather offers a unique canvas where imagination can run wild!

We get it. The thought of sitting through another mundane PowerPoint presentation might make you want to run for the hills. But fear not, because we’re here to spark some fun PowerPoint ideas for your your next presentation. Whether you’re aiming to captivate colleagues during a virtual meeting, add a splash of excitement to your classroom, or simply stun your friends at your next PowerPoint game night , we’ve got you covered with ideas that blend education and entertainment seamlessly.

So, fasten your seatbelt (or loosen your tie 😉), as we embark on a complete list through categories that will transform your next PowerPoint presentation into a rollercoaster of excitement. Whatever theme you’re thinking of for your next presentation, these fun PowerPoint ideas are poised to leave your audience not just informed, but exhilarated.

Why Settle for the Ordinary? Elevate Your Presentations with Fun PowerPoint Ideas!

You might be wondering, why bother with all the extra effort to infuse fun into your PowerPoint presentations? After all, the usual routine of bullet points and graphs seems to get the job done, right? Well, allow us to unveil why taking the road less traveled and incorporating fun PowerPoint ideas can be the game-changer you never knew you needed.

🤸🏻‍♀️  Unforgettable Engagement

Let’s face it – the human attention span isn’t exactly legendary. But when you introduce a touch of fun into your presentation, you’re not just holding attention, you’re capturing it in a delightful grip. Unconventional ideas, witty humor, and interactive elements transform passive listeners into active participants , making your message resonate and stick.

🧠  Enhanced Memorability

Ever noticed how the most memorable experiences are the ones that evoke emotion? The same principle applies to presentations. When you inject an element of fun, whether it’s a surprising twist, a clever visual, or an unexpected game , you create a mental anchor for your audience. Those who chuckle and engage are more likely to remember and recall the essence of your presentation long after it’s over.

🎨  Sparking Creativity

The world thrives on innovation, and that extends to the world of presentations too. Opting for fun PowerPoint ideas challenges you to think beyond the norm and come up with creative solutions . It encourages you to see your content from new angles, fostering a culture of innovation and resourcefulness that extends beyond the presentation room.

💬  Connection and Communication

Human beings connect through shared experiences and emotions. By introducing an element of fun, you’re forging a connection with your audience that goes beyond the screen. Laughter and engagement create a bond, facilitating better understanding and communication. In a professional setting, this can translate into improved team dynamics and a more open dialogue.

So, while the tried-and-true method might get you from point A to point B, why not embark on a journey that’s not only efficient but also exhilarating? Why settle for the ordinary when you can captivate, connect, and leave a mark with your fun PowerPoint ideas? The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. It’s time to break free from the mold and transform your presentations into extraordinary experiences that linger long after the last slide.

150+ Fun PowerPoint Ideas for All Presentation Types

Fun powerpoint ideas for social gatherings and events.

• Emoji Charades:  Use emojis as clues for a game of charades with friends.
• Virtual Costume Party:  Have participants dress up and share their costumes on slides.
• Name That Tune:  Play a few seconds of a song and challenge attendees to guess the title.
• Create Your Meme:  Provide images and have guests come up with humorous captions.
• Bucket List Share:  Have everyone share one item from their bucket list with images and explanations.
• Interactive Map Quest:  Share travel stories and ask attendees to guess the locations on a map.
• Party Playlist Collaboration:  Let participants add their favorite songs to a shared playlist slide.
• Personal Trivia:  Create a slide about yourself with facts for others to guess.
• Two Truths and a Lie:  Participants share statements; others guess which one is false.
• Virtual Escape Room:  Turn your slides into a virtual escape room with puzzles and clues.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for the Workplace

• Emoji Icebreaker:  Start meetings with a slide displaying emojis representing moods.
• Reverse Role Presentation:  Present as if you’re the audience and vice versa.
• Meme Monday Updates:  Share weekly updates in meme format to keep things light.
• Interactive Polls:  Add clickable options for participants to vote on decisions.
• Choose Your Adventure:  Present a scenario with choices, letting the audience decide the outcome.
• Team Trivia Challenge:  Test knowledge with team-based trivia using PowerPoint animations.
• Inspirational Quote Showcase:  Share powerful quotes with visual design to motivate the team.
• Visualize Goals:  Use animations to show progress towards team goals over time.
• Role Play Skits:  Act out scenarios using images and text in a comic book-style layout.
• Name the Colleague:  Share humorous hints to have attendees guess the colleague.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for the Classroom

• Science Experiment Journey:  Present the process and results of a science experiment.
• Historical Time Travel:  Create immersive history lessons with visuals and sound effects.
• Math Riddle Challenge:  Share math riddles and reveal solutions with animations.
• Language Learning Adventure:  Teach vocabulary and phrases in a foreign language interactively.
• Literary Parodies:  Analyze literature through humorous parodies of famous stories.
• Math Olympics:  Turn math problems into interactive challenges with medals for winners.
• Interactive Periodic Table:  Explore chemical elements with interactive info and animations.
• Geography Quiz:  Engage students with interactive maps and questions.
• Scientific Pictionary:  Play a Pictionary-style game with scientific terms and concepts.
• Art Appreciation Gallery:  Analyze famous artworks through an interactive virtual gallery.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Personal Projects & Hobbies

• Hobby Exhibition:  Display your hobbies, from painting to photography, using slides.
• Fitness Journey Timeline:  Document your fitness progress with images and data charts.
• Digital Portfolio:  Showcase your work and skills through an interactive digital portfolio.
• Travelogue:  Share your travel experiences with photos, anecdotes, and travel tips.
• DIY Tutorial:  Teach a craft or DIY project through a series of animated slides.
• Music Playlist Presentation:  Curate themed playlists and explain your song choices.
• Language Learning Journey:  Document your progress in learning a new language.
• Culinary Adventure:  Showcase international cuisines you’ve explored and cooked.
• Writing Journey:  Share your writing process and excerpts from your creative pieces.
• Art Evolution:  Display your artistic journey from early works to current creations.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Storytelling

• Virtual World Tour:  Craft a global adventure through storytelling and images.
• Mystery Detective Story:  Unravel a mystery using clues and interactive elements.
• Personal Evolution:  Share your life journey through milestones and anecdotes.
• Time-Traveling Adventure:  Create an interactive story that spans different eras.
• Fairy Tale Remix:  Reimagine classic fairy tales with a modern twist.
• Unsolved Mysteries:  Present historical or fictional mysteries and let the audience speculate.
• Myth vs. Fact:  Compare myths and facts through interactive scenarios.
• Character Development Showcase:  Create profiles of fictional characters with images and backstories.
• Epic Quest Narrative:  Craft an epic journey with challenges, choices, and consequences.
• Alternate Endings:  Rewrite the endings of famous stories with your creative twist.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Challenges and Quizzes

• Trivia Extravaganza:  Host a fun-filled trivia night with interactive questions and answers.
• Visual Riddles:  Present visual riddles and reveal the solutions with animations.
• Guess the Sound:  Play audio clips for attendees to guess the corresponding sounds.
• Brain Teaser Quiz:  Challenge participants with puzzles that test logical thinking.
• Quote Identification:  Display famous quotes and ask participants to identify the source.
• Word Association Challenge:  Present words and have participants quickly associate related words.
• Pop Culture Trivia:  Test knowledge of movies, music, and current events through a quiz.
• Speed Typing Challenge:  Display words, and participants type them as fast as they can.
• Guess the Logo:  Share partial images of logos for attendees to guess the brands.
• Memory Game:  Reveal a series of images, then ask attendees to recall the order.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Data and Infographics

• Data Storytelling:  Transform statistics and data into compelling visual narratives.
• Illustrated Concepts:  Use custom illustrations to explain complex ideas and concepts.
• Interactive Infographics:  Create clickable infographics with hidden details and insights.
• Process Flow Comics:  Present processes as comic strips with characters navigating each step.
• Comparative Timelines:  Compare historical events, progress, or trends side by side.
• Interactive Charts and Graphs:  Make charts interactive for deeper exploration of data.
• Explorable Maps:  Present geographical data with interactive maps and annotations.
• Evolution of Technology:  Visualize the evolution of technology and its impact.
• Visual Decision Trees:  Present decision-making processes as interactive branching scenarios.
• Illustrated Quotes:  Combine famous quotes with custom illustrations that capture their essence.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Motivational Talks

• Personal Growth Journey:  Share your personal growth journey with motivational lessons.
• Success Stories:  Present inspiring stories of individuals who overcame challenges.
• Motivational Quotes Compilation:  Curate a collection of powerful quotes for inspiration.
• Life Lessons Through Stories:  Convey life lessons using engaging narrative examples.
• Overcoming Adversity:  Share stories of resilience and strategies to overcome challenges.
• The Power of Positivity:  Explore the impact of positive thinking on personal and professional life.
• Leadership Insights:  Present leadership principles with examples from renowned leaders.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Futuristic and Imaginative Presentations

• Time Capsule:  Present predictions and visions of the future with a time capsule theme.
• Virtual Reality Showcase:  Use VR-inspired visuals to immerse the audience in your content.
• Space Exploration:  Explore the cosmos with interactive space-themed slides.
• Inventions of Tomorrow:  Present imaginative ideas for future inventions and innovations.
• Post-Apocalyptic Scenarios:  Craft a presentation depicting post-apocalyptic worlds and possibilities.
• AI and Robotics:  Discuss the future of AI and robotics through speculative presentations.
• Dystopian vs. Utopian:  Compare and contrast dystopian and utopian visions of the future.
• Future of Education:  Visualize how education might evolve with technology and trends.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Entertainment and Pop Culture

• Guess the Movie Scene:  Display screenshots and challenge your audience to guess the movie.
• Pop Culture Charades:  Act out pop culture references, from movies to memes.
• Fan Theories Discussion:  Present and analyze intriguing fan theories about popular shows or movies.
• Celebrity Look-Alike Game:  Share images of ordinary people who resemble celebrities.
• Music Lyrics Challenge:  Display song lyrics with missing words for attendees to complete.
• TV Show Mashup:  Combine characters and scenes from different TV shows for humorous outcomes.
• Pop Culture Trivia Tournament:  Host a tournament-style trivia challenge with various rounds.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Self-Care and Wellness

• Mindful Moments:  Guide attendees through a short mindfulness exercise during your presentation.
• Self-Care Bingo:  Create bingo cards with self-care activities for a wellness-themed meeting.
• Healthy Habits Showcase:  Present effective wellness tips and habits for a balanced lifestyle.
• Stress Relief Techniques:  Share interactive slides with stress-relief exercises and techniques.
• Gratitude Journal:  Encourage participants to share moments of gratitude during the presentation.
• Daily Affirmations:  Present daily affirmations to boost positivity and confidence.
• Wellness Goal Tracker:  Create interactive slides to track personal wellness goals.
• Mental Health Awareness:  Present insights and resources for maintaining mental well-being.

Fun PowerPoint Ideas for Cultural Exploration and Diversity

• Global Cuisine Showcase:  Present unique dishes from various cultures with images and descriptions.
• Folklore and Legends:  Share fascinating folktales and legends from different countries.
• Cultural Attire Exhibition:  Display traditional clothing and explain their significance.
• Language Showcase:  Teach fun phrases and greetings from different languages.
• World Festivals Journey:  Explore diverse festivals and celebrations from different cultures.
• Cultural Traditions Quiz:  Create interactive slides to test knowledge of cultural customs.

Want More? Download This Exclusive PowerPoint Ideas Book with 160 Fun PowerPoint Ideas! 👇

Best practices to maximize your fun powerpoint ideas.

Congratulations, you’re now armed with a treasure trove of fun PowerPoint ideas that are bound to leave your audience both entertained and enlightened. But before you dive headfirst into crafting your next presentation masterpiece, consider these tips to ensure your creative efforts shine:

• Tailor your chosen fun PowerPoint idea to your audience’s preferences and expectations. What might resonate with friends at a game night could differ from what engages colleagues in a meeting.
• While fun is essential, remember the purpose of your presentation. Make sure the chosen idea aligns with your message and doesn’t overshadow the content.
• Familiarize yourself with the technical aspects of executing your chosen idea. Smooth transitions, animations, and interactions contribute to a polished presentation.
• While creativity is key, don’t sacrifice clarity for novelty. Ensure your audience can follow your narrative and main points throughout.
• Manage your time effectively. Ensure your fun elements don’t consume too much of the presentation, leaving room for your core content.
• Maintain a consistent visual theme to tie together the fun elements and the main content. Harmonious design enhances the overall experience.
• Before the big day, gather feedback from colleagues or friends. Their insights can help you refine your presentation and identify areas for improvement.
• Embrace the fun you’ve planned. Confidence in your delivery will make your audience more receptive to the engaging elements you’ve integrated.
• Sometimes, unexpected technical glitches or participant reactions can arise. Be prepared to adapt on the spot to keep the fun flowing.
• If your fun idea involves interactive elements, make sure they work flawlessly. Test the technology and ensure everyone can participate seamlessly.

Remember, these tips aren’t meant to limit your creativity, rather, they’re tools to ensure your creative ideas are presented in the best possible light. By blending innovation, enthusiasm, and strategic planning, you’re set to deliver a presentation that’s both fun and impactful.

And there you have it – a whole bunch of exciting, innovative fun PowerPoint ideas ready to turn your next presentation into a showstopper! From parties to classrooms, meetings to personal projects, we’ve covered it all. Now, it’s your turn to run with these creative gems and make your slides come alive with laughter, engagement, and sheer enjoyment.

With over 150 ideas to choose from, you’re set to rock any occasion. So, don’t just settle for the usual slides – inject your unique style, tell stories, and keep everyone on their toes. Remember, it’s all about sparking connections, sparking ideas, and having a blast while you’re at it. Here’s to unleashing your inner presentation superstar – one fun idea at a time!

More Fun PowerPoint Ideas

Free PowerPoint Trivia Template for Different Difficulty Levels

How to Make a Jeopardy Game on PowerPoint (Playable Template)

Level Up Your Game: Free Family Feud PowerPoint Template and Step-by-Step Tutorial

Free Interactive PowerPoint Puzzle Template and Tutorial in 5 Simple Steps

About Ausbert Generoso

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14 Fun & Interactive Presentation Games for Teams and Students

So you've got an audience to energize, students to engage, or a team that needs a little extra fun — playing an interactive presentation game is an easy way to do just that.

We've done the research and found the best of these games for you: we looked specifically for games that are simple to set up, fun to play, and flexible enough to be used with a variety of presentations and audiences. Most of these activities work virtually with Zoom/PowerPoint and can also be used in person.

Which of these 14 presentation games do you like best? Take a look and let us know your favorites:

1. Live Trivia Competition

A great way to ramp up the excitement and engagement is to enable a little bit of friendly competition. Trivia is an easy way to do this—plus, it can be whole-group inclusive and large-audience friendly (if you use the right tools).

Here's a great trivia game you can run with your team, students, or any large audience. It's already created for you with questions and scoring built in to make it even easier:

Here's how to play:

• Make a free account here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the slide deck and copy it. 
• Launch the trivia game by clicking "Start Event."
• Invite your group to join in and submit answers using their mobile devices (show the winners automatically).
• Interact and play during your presentation!

This trivia game has questions on many topics to keep your audience's attention and appeal to everyone. It only takes 10-15 minutes to play, so it's a great game for long discussions! Also, this interactive activity is free for up to ten participants and is totally customizable.

2. Sing and Swing 

To really liven up your group, encourage your listeners to play Sing and Swing. This activity is best for long presentations because it boosts energy, creates a fun, light-hearted environment, and makes people laugh a lot. 

Here's how to play: 

• Before your presentation, pick a well-known song and rewrite the chorus (replace parts of it with words and phrases from your presentation) 
• When you're ready to play, show the song on your screen. 
• Invite your audience to sing it with you!

If you have a fun group or a class of energetic students, consider adding choreography to engage your audience even more. 

3. 20 Questions

If you want a presentation game that requires your listeners to talk more than you, 20 Questions is the one to play! A classic and simple activity, this game immediately boosts engagement and gets people laughing. 

Here's how to play: Have someone put an appropriate image or word on the screen behind you (this can be an audience member you trust or a colleague or co-presenter). To make things more fun, put on a blindfold so that everyone knows you can't cheat. From there, ask 20 "yes or no" questions to guess what's displayed on the screen. Your group should respond "yes" or "no" to guide you to the correct answer. 

4. Scavenger Hunt Challenge

To get your audience out of their seats, a scavenger hunt challenge is one of the best interactive games for presentations. It'll immediately energize your audience , team, or students while giving them a fun way to learn.  

There are tons of in-person and virtual scavenger hunt ideas you can use to dive deeper into your topic or help everyone learn about one another. But if you want a ready-to-play game that you can instantly launch without having any tech skills, here's a fun one to play: 

• Use an email address and password to create a free account here: https://slideswith.com/ (a free account guarantees up to ten people can play at no charge). 
• Click the game and press "Copy and use this slide deck." 
• In the top right corner, click "Start Event."
• Ask listeners to join the game by using their mobile devices to scan the QR code. Players should continue using their mobile devices to submit answers to questions.
• Have everyone start hunting for items! 

This activity is a particularly fun game because it's a photo-hunt, show-and-tell challenge! That means your audience will not only get out of their seats to find items, but they'll also get to take pictures and share and discuss photos of what they find. This conversational element will help engage your group! 

5. Group Word Clouds

Whether you're speaking to team members, students, or conference-goers, this activity lets you ask questions and get your listeners' thoughts on specific topics. 

This game is the perfect way to start your presentation, especially if you're discussing something with a wide range of opinions or are unsure how much your listeners know about a certain subject. Group Word Clouds is also beneficial if you want to do a quick meeting pulse or know how your listeners feel going into your presentation—understanding their energy levels and mood can help you adjust (if necessary) to get maximum engagement and excitement.

To enjoy this activity, keep things simple by using a tool that already offers a ready-to-play Group Word Clouds game. Here's a popular one you can launch immediately: 

• Create a free account by entering an email and password here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the game and then copy it (the button to do so is right underneath the slide deck).
• Press "Start Event" in the top right corner. 
• Tell participants to play by scanning the QR code. 
• Create word clouds and have fun!

This interactive game only takes 5-10 minutes to play, so it's a fast, fun way to engage your audience and feel out the room. Players can use their mobile devices to answer questions. This activity is also free for up to 10 people and is easy to personalize.

6. The Get to Know You Game

This activity is one of the best presentation games if you have a small group that doesn't really know each other. The Get to Know You Game is a creative way to do introductions, and it's really simple.

Here's how to play the game: Before the event, ask group members to bring a favorite song or item to the presentation (you can do this by emailing them). When you're ready to play, ask each person to introduce themself, present their song or item, and explain why they picked it. For those sharing a song, have them play it on their phones before they explain why it's their favorite. 

7. Live Poll Questions 

When you have a large group, it's not easy to find ways to boost engagement—but poll questions are the solutions, especially when they're live and interactive. With this unique setup, large groups engage by answering questions and seeing their answers displayed in a fun way. 

Your job is to make sure you actually find a game that showcases responses uniquely to captivate your group. For a quick and great option, here's a popular icebreaker activity that promises to display responses using fun formats like word clouds, donut charts, live graphs, and per-player: 

• Create an account for free to access the game:  https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the slide deck and press the button to copy it. 
• Look in the top right corner of the deck and press "Start Event."
• Invite your group to play the game. They only need to use their mobile devices to scan the QR code. 
• Start polling your audience!

This activity is one of those fun presentation games everyone will want to enjoy, so invite all of your team members and students to participate. This game can accommodate up to 250 players and takes 5-10 minutes to complete. Tell your group to use their mobile devices to submit their responses. 

8. Assumptions 

This interactive game is a great way to break up your presentation to see who's paying attention and who can answer questions pertaining to your topic. 

• Ask your audience to stand up (for virtual presentations, make sure everyone's video is on). 
• Show true or false statements on the screen one by one. 
• Tell people to raise a hand if they think the statement is correct and sit down if they think it's incorrect.
• Continue until one person is left standing.
• Award the winner. 

This activity can be as short and challenging as you want. Also, if your presentation is long, you can play multiple rounds to break up your speaking time and test your audience throughout your discussion.  

9. Controversial Questions 

Want to see where your audience, students, or team lands on controversial topics? Then, energize your presentation with a fun, creative game called Controversial Questions. This activity has prompts that inspire lively debates, so it's a great way to get your group excited and chatty. 

However, to maintain a positive environment, make sure to find a tool that offers an office-friendly, classroom-friendly, and conference-friendly game. You don't want to sour the mood by creating uncomfortable division during your presentation. To make sure this game is fun and light-hearted, here's a popular one that's suitable for all audiences and ages: 

• Sign up for a free account by inputting an email address and password here:  https://slideswith.com/pricing  
• Click the game and press the button that says, "Copy and use this deck." 
• Press "Start Event" (the button is in the top right corner). 
• Have participants join the fun by asking them to scan the QR code with their mobile devices. 
• Get controversial and play! 

This interactive game for presentations asks fun (but appropriate) questions like:

• Does pineapple belong on pizza?
• Does the person flying in the middle seat get both armrests?
• Should the toilet roll go over or under? 

Players should use their mobile devices to submit answers. Up to ten people can play for free, and you can customize the game by updating the questions!

10. Word of the Day 

With this activity, you can keep your audience, team, or students engaged throughout your entire presentation. This  game requires listeners to be alert and recognize whenever you say the word of the day. 

Here's how to play: At the beginning of your presentation, tell your group the word of the day (it can also be a phrase if you'd prefer). Say that you'll weave the word into your presentation and that your audience must shout it out whenever you mention it. 

11. Mini Activity: Group Icebreaker

Whether you're doing an in-person or virtual presentation, you need to warm up your audience to get things started on a positive note. The best way to do that is with a quick icebreaker game. 

However, make sure your questions are fun, positive, and engaging. You can easily do this by finding a game that already has the best icebreaker questions included. Here's one that's ready to play (and requiring no tech skills to launch): 

• Input an email address and password to make a free account here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click the deck and copy it (press "Copy and use this deck). 
• Click the button in the top right corner that says "Start Event."
• Invite participants to play by asking them to scan the QR code. 
• Break the ice to warm up your audience!

Your group should use their mobile devices to submit responses to poll questions. Also, this game accommodates up to 250 players, but only ten people can join for free.

12. Process of Elimination 

This activity is one of the best games for presentations because it's simple yet fun and great at helping listeners get to know each other. You can play it at the beginning of your presentation or in the middle to give your group a chance to stretch their legs. 

• Before your event, create a list of "yes or no" questions. 
• Once you're ready to play, tell your group to stand up (if you're doing a virtual presentation, make sure everyone's video is on). 
• Ask each question one by one. 
• Tell attendees to stand if their answer is "yes" and sit if their answer is "no." 

The questions can relate to your topic or be totally random. Also, if you'd prefer to thin out the number of people standing, you can take a creative twist and ask your questions by saying something like this: "Stay standing if (insert scenario)." When phrasing each question this way, the game will end with one person standing. To acknowledge the winner, you can give them a round of applause or award them a prize. 

13. Conference Opener Icebreaker 

If you're speaking at a big conference, you need an interactive game for presentations that can get everyone involved and ensure every voice is heard. To achieve these goals, you should create an icebreaker game that works for large groups . 

Using an easy, intuitive template is the best step to take. That way, you don't have to start from scratch or spend hours making your game. For a template that requires no code or tech-savviness to build on, here's the best option: 

• Sign up by making a free account here: https://slideswith.com/  
• Click on the game. On the next page, click the button to copy and use the deck. 
• Customize the template using the instructions HERE . 
• During your presentation, press "Start Event" in the top right corner. 
• Ask the group to use their mobile devices to scan the QR code and join the fun. (Also, make sure participants use their mobile devices to submit answers.) 
• Play and engage your audience!  

This template has fun, interactive features built in to keep your large audience engaged. Those features include polls, word clouds, and ratings. Just make sure you sign up for a paid plan to accommodate the large number of people in your group—the free account only works for up to ten players. 

14. Two Truths and a Lie 

This classic game is a fun, energizing way to help your listeners get to know one another. It's perfect for small in-person or virtual groups and is an ideal activity for the beginning of your presentation. 

Here's how to play: Pick any topic (for the purposes of this article, the topic will be "movies"). In no particular order, say two movies you've really watched and one you haven't watched. Ask your audience to guess which statement is the lie. The winner picks the next topic and says two truths and a lie. 

Be Memorable With Presentation Games

Oftentimes, people forget presentations within a week or even days, and that's because the discussions are boring. But you don't work hard preparing a presentation for it to be forgotten. If you want your message to stick, all you have to do is make it enjoyable without being corny.  

If you want to be remembered and actually get people engaged, you need to make your presentation fun and enjoyable, without coming off as corny or desperate to please. Ivan Dimitrijevic, 10 Secrets of Making Every Presentation Fun, Engaging, and Enjoyable

Luckily, the interactive presentation games in this article are unique and exciting—they're far from corny. So, use them for your upcoming presentations to make your messages compelling and memorable. 

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7 Tips to Make Your School Presentation Stand Out

Canva is a wonderful accessible program that anyone can learn to use to make an array of graphic assets. You can use this versatile tool to elevate your next school presentation. Who says that school has to look boring? Making information visually appealing is extremely impactful and exactly what a designer does! Plus, making a factually accurate presentation that is fun and beautiful will score you extra points with your teacher. In today’s Canva tutorial , we will talk about how to make your school presentation stand out. These tips can be implemented and modified to make a presentation for your own topic for class. Not only will you have wonderful pieces you can use for school but you can have a bit more fun doing homework!

Discover tips to make your school presentation stand out

In a crowd of presentations, how do you make yours stand out? There are many boring pre-made templates that don’t use enough pictures out there, and if you’re in a time crunch there’s no problem using these. This tutorial wants to challenge you to create a stunning presentation from scratch rather than copying and pasting into a carbon-copied template. Here you will learn a few tricks to turning your boring school presentation to an eye-catching work of art.

1. Have a stunning opener

First impressions are important and that counts for school presentations too! Make that first opening slide memorable but remember to keep it relevant to your topic. Remember, keep the aesthetic for the rest of your presentation, because the opening slide sets the tone for the rest of the presentation.

Make sure not to overcrowd your opening slide with pictures, graphics, or words. In this case, less is more. You can even make one image frame your text for an effortless but professional look. Just make sure to have all the important information on there.

2. Limit the colors in your presentation

Use no more than five colors for your whole presentation. Remember simplicity is key. It is hard to know which words or information is important if every word is a different color! Use color sparingly, consistently and to highlight important information. Use your colors as accents, not the main stars of your presentation.

3. Have consistent slides

Build a template you can follow throughout your presentation. Or chose any of Canva's existing templates from the toolbar on the left. Then adapt the colors to make it uniquely your own by clicking on each object in the template, clicking on the color box near the top left of your slide window, and changing the color.

Add visual interest by using a second font. Pair different fonts and styles for body copy and titles in your slides and stick with it with all of your slides. In terms of fonts, also try to stick to a sans-serif font, as it will be easier for audience members to read. Pick a similar background and use the same colors throughout your presentation and make them indicate similar things throughout your presentation to create a design language with your audience and solidify information rapidly.

4. Add stunning photos

Have you noticed the most boring presentations lack any visual elements and pictures? Although some may think it distracting from the information at hand, visuals can help solidify information in your presentation. A lot of people learn in different ways, so by keeping it entertaining and visually appealing for those visual learners, you can broaden the interest of your audience. In fact, visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text!

To add photos or graphics in Canva, use the toolbar on the left to click on Elements. Then search for the item you're hoping to add. Next click on Photos, Graphics or Videos to see relevant results for each type of content. Once you find the image you like, just click on it and drag it onto your slide. You can also upload your own images by clicking Upload in the left-hand toolbar.

5. Write short, direct bullet points

Presentations are all about information so we want the message to be clear. Remember, less means more! Like in the title page, only put the most important information on your slides and make them short and easy to understand sentences. Visuals can help where words can fail.

6. Add some finishing flourish

You can add simple animations and transitions between slides to really make your presentation come to life! To add animations simply click on the objects on your slide you want to animate, and then click Animate above your working window. You'll have to option to chose how those objects move onto the slide, such as from the left side, from the bottom, and so on. You can also use animation to make items get larger or smaller (select under Scale), and really pop out by tumbling (select under Exaggerate), and more.

7. Don’t forget to research!

Now that you have a visually stunning presentation, hit it out of the ball park by having accurate facts fill in those short bullet points. What your teacher will care about is facts, making it look pretty is the icing on the cake. Research your topic online, reference your textbook, and ask your teacher for more information if needed!

Want to learn more about how Canva works?

If you liked this tutorial and want to learn more about how to navigate and create with Canva, take our Canva for Beginners Classes . If you got Canva down already but want to learn a bit more about design principles, take a look at our Discovering Design Classes .

Try tips to make your school presentation stand out

If you’re interested in learning another design software we also have a Procreate tips for beginners tutorial and a fun beginner Procreate  tutorial.

Written by Ashley Velasquez. As a visual learner growing up in the age of technology, she was fascinated by the graphics and videos that would dance on early computer screens. As she started pursuing Visual Communications in college, she found that design involved in translating information, ideas and opinions onto endless platforms.

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13 Interactive Presentation Ideas to Engage Students in Class

If you’re a teacher, you’ll know that there’s a lot to think about when you’re in class. It’s important to ensure that what you’re teaching the children is as educational and as interesting as possible - with the aim of engaging the students in the subject and hopefully even enabling them to enjoy learning! 

This can be a very difficult balance to strike. However, it’s made easier by these interactive presentation ideas listed in this article, which can engage even the most distracted of students!

How to display presentations

The best classroom gadget to show these presentations on is an interactive display. These are large devices that are mounted to the wall and can connect seamlessly with any video collaboration applications. You can connect interactive displays to the internet and further use them as a powerful classroom teaching tool, to help students learn in a fully interactive and efficient way. We sell interactive displays for classrooms  here at Avocor.

Interactive class presentation ideas 

Ice breakers.

Many work-related presentations start with an icebreaker, and there’s no reason why a presentation to a class of students should be any different. 

The icebreaker question will depend on the class and age of students, but could be something like the following: 

• If you could be an animal, what would it be and why? 
• What would be your dream place to go on holiday? 
• If you could have dinner with three historical characters, who would they be and why? 
• If you could make any kind of potion, what would it do? 

Incorporating video is one of the best interactive presentation ideas for students. Even if the video is about the same topic as the presentation, the fact that it’s a different type of media will interest the class. 

You can either find a suitable video on YouTube or another video software or, if you have a file saved, paste it directly into the presentation . 

Questions and answers

Questions and answers are a great way to get the whole class involved. You could invite one student to ask a hypothetical question about the topic, and another could answer. 

For example, if you’re learning about Henry VIII and his six wives , you could ask a student to ask a question about them. Their question could be “what was Henry VIII’s favourite food?” or something similar. 

When another student answers, you could ask them to explain their answer - for example, if they say “meat and bread”, they might carry on to explain that that was the main diet for royalty at the time. 

Songs are a good way to interest younger kids in a topic. You can find songs about all sorts of subjects on YouTube. For example, this seven continents song could be suitable for a Geography song. 

Many songs on YouTube have lyrics, so you could encourage your class to practice their reading as they sing along. 

Some presentations are made more interactive by external objects - and if you want to engage younger kids, bringing some props can really help the lesson to come alive. 

For example, if you’re doing a history lesson about the Ancient Egyptians , you could bring some figures of Tutankhamun, the Sphinx and the ancient pyramids for everybody to see. 

Class involvement

Asking for direct class involvement throughout the presentation is a good way to ensure that students stay engaged. For instance, if you’re doing a presentation about animals, you could ask students to make a noise every time you mention a certain animal.

You could ask them to roar each time you mention lions, or make a monkey noise each time you talk about monkeys. This is a great way to ensure that the students are paying attention! 

Transitions and animations

A simple way to ensure that your students are paying attention is to use different transitions and animations throughout your presentation. 

If you’re teaching older kids or teenagers, you might not want to have too many of these, but younger kids will love seeing every item bounce onto the screen. It’s a wonderful way to get them interested in technology in the classroom !

Quizzes are an effective way to engage students of any age. You can include these at the end of the presentation and they can include questions that you’ve covered in the session. 

If your students know that there will be a quiz at the end of the class, they may be more likely to pay attention throughout it! You could also ensure maximum engagement by telling students that there will be prizes for the winner of the quiz - such as stickers or sweets. 

Interactive games

Interactive games for class presentations are always a popular way to ensure that students stay engaged! Some examples include: 

• noughts and crosses or tic tac toe
• pictionary 
• hangman or an alternative like spaceman
• 21 questions

It’s best to make these games related to the subject. For example, the game “21 questions” involves you thinking of a character and students asking questions with a yes or no answer about what character you are. 

If you’re teaching a history class, the character could be somebody from history (such as Florence Nightingale or Queen Victoria), or if you’re instructing a science lesson, the character could be a famous scientist (like Einstein or Steven Hawking). 

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is another great way to get the class involved. You can use an interactive display to create the brainstorm diagram on. Students can take turns writing on the board, and it  can securely connect to any external devices, so any remote class members can join in. 

With an interactive display, you can also immediately share the diagram to the rest of the class once it’s finished, so they can keep it to refresh their knowledge of a topic. 

For example, if you’re teaching your class about Australia in geography , you could ask their students what they may already know about Australia. They could come up with some items like the following: 

• Sydney Opera House
• Aboriginal art
• outback 

You could then create a spider diagram with different legs depending on the topic. For this list, there could be an “animals” leg for kangaroos and koalas, an “architecture” leg for the Sydney Opera House, a “landscapes” leg for the rainforest and outback, a “culture” leg for Aboriginal art and a “food” leg for BBQ.

Make a story

Making a story about the topics covered can encourage creativity around the topic. To do this, write down a couple of opening lines to a story related to the topic that you’re teaching. 

For example, if you’re teaching students about the Ancient Roman Empire, you could start by saying “Ronald the Roman lived in the British City of Bath, where the Romans had arrived 20 years before. He spent most of his time at work, where he built houses for the rest of the Romans”. 

Then, you could invite a student to continue the story, encouraging them to stay as on-topic as possible. You could even give out a prize to the student with the best part of the story. Depending on the size of the class, you could ask every student to contribute. 

Stories also work well for English lessons. In these classes, the topic of the story doesn’t matter as much, but you could encourage students to use whatever language they’ve been learning. 

For example, if your class has been focused on adjectives, you could ask students to put as many adjectives as possible in each part of their story. 

Have a short play 

You could take your stories to the next level by creating a short play on one of your slides. This could be based on whatever topic you’re learning about, and you could select a few students to come to the front of the class and read out the lines. 

You may wish to create this personally, find a relevant play online or you could even turn a well-known story into a play!

Virtual field trip

One of the most creative interactive school presentation ideas is to take the class on a virtual field trip. This is particularly valuable for geography lessons, where you may learn about places that students might not be able to visit in person, like the Amazon rainforest or even under the sea!

You could link to Google maps, where you could use Google Earth to explore a particular area. Alternatively, there are some YouTube channels that specialise in virtual tours and field trips, such as this one which details all you need to know about rainforests .

If you have a classroom full of students and want to keep them as engaged as possible while teaching them new material, try some of these interactive games for classroom presentations and other ideas! 

By incorporating some of these interactive ideas into your presentation, you’ll have the students’ full undivided attention and ensure that they not only enjoy the class but retain the information.

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17 Killer Presentations Tips for Students Who Want to Stand out

The best presentation I ever heard was about soap.

The presenter was a big football jock and before he began speaking he pulled out a small, pink bar of soap, threw it in the air and said, “This is my favorite scent – lavender rose.” The whole room chuckled, and he proceeded, “Now I’m going to tell you how this bar of soap has destroyed society.” My jaw dropped.

As a former student who has been through many mind-numbing talks, I was shocked; this guy wasn’t boring, and he wasn’t nervous. He made presenting look like a breeze! But how did he take such a banal assignment and get the whole class glued to him like a beard on a hipster!?

What exactly made “Mr. Football Soap” stand out!? And what makes any good presenter stand out for that matter?

We remember presentations and speeches by Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Clinton because, although they may have different personalities and delivery styles – they all share the same secrets when it comes to delivering presentations. So whether you are in middle school or graduating college (or anywhere in life), follow these 17 steps and your presentation will be received with a standing ovation.

1. You Have a Personality, Show it

Conan O’Brien is notorious for making fun of himself (here’s a clip where he accepts the title as Ginger Ninja ), while Jerry Seinfeld turns ordinary situations into incredible drama. Are you goofy? Are you good at impressions? Do you have over the top energy or do you have a soft tone that can calm a crowd? Whatever you got, use it and be you!

2. Surprise them, Talk to a Cartoon

This is a pretty amazing trick I’ve used in the past and it’s bound to shock any audience. You can create a short animated video, using animation software such as Powtoon , integrate it into your presentation, and interact with an animated character. It can be a cartoon, a celebrity, an evil corporate boss or even the smiling sun! Just prepare the character to pop in from the right or left- then stand on the opposite side and interact. That’s it! You’ve added a new dimension to your presentation. Extra kudos if you take a few more minutes to add in a speech bubble or voiceover!

3. Don’t Read

PowerPoint was created to show bullets and short text. The purpose of your written words are to act as a trigger; they get you talking about each point. The rest should come from you. Spend the time choosing your keywords and not writing descriptions.

4. Improvise

No one is 100% sure what they’ll say or how they’ll say it. Take former President Bill Clinton for example; When it comes to improvisation, Clinton gets the Oscar. During his very first State of the Union address, the wrong health-care speech showed up on the teleprompter, so he relied on his memory and common sense to wing it. Clinton ignored over 20% of the initial speech! Smooth and rehearsed presentations don’t make history. So don’t be scared, pull out the unexpected!

5. Use Your Hands

Italians do it, pick up artists do it, and successful politicians do it: Move your hands! Point to a picture on the slide, add gestures, mimic a motion, and use your hands to emphasize the expressions on your face.

6. Pump Yourself Up

Pre-gaming is all about preparing for the final game. In this case, you may want to loosen nerves by jumping up and down, screaming out the title of your presentation or practicing the entire thing, one more time, in front of the mirror… Your energy level sets the bar! Yes, that exclamation mark was put there to prove a point! When you are pumped up it’s easy to extend this energy to your audience. You are not lecturing to a college class, or reading off data to your peers, you are on stage! And you are excited. Be loud, be enthusiastic, and be happy.

7. Take a Pause, Prevent ‘Ummmm…’

This is one of my favorite tricks, if you get stuck or nervous in the middle of your presentation, saying “um” or “Ah” feels good because it fills the silent room. There are 2 quick fixes: Talk slower and add pauses for emphasis.

8. Vocal Variety

Do you want to ride a rollercoaster or stare at a still river? When it comes to speech the rollercoaster is the way to go! Amazing public speakers alternate their voice and tone between loud and low, excited and serious, soft and dramatic… this is called “vocal variety” and it keeps people tuned in to what you have to say.

9. Look em’ in the Eyes!

Don’t talk at people, talk to them. Look at the students in the front row, in the middle aisle and at the back. You don’t have to consciously remember this; just integrate eye contact into your presentation by moving around! Pacing a bit or changing sides will naturally move your eyes to different areas of the room . Stop in the middle of the presentation and ask a question, look around at those who answer or agree/ disagree.

FYI: focusing all your attention on the decision maker (i.e. professor, teacher, investor) is a big mistake – You’ll get an A if you delivered your message effectively, not by selling to the teacher.

10. Let Images Take Over Your Screen

Images are powerful. Instead of using bullets on each slide to emphasize your point, you can take up the whole screen with a strong or even controversial image. Are you making a presentation on foreign language, show a confused tourist in Paris! Are you speaking about technology in third world countries? This image by Sven Torfinn is breathtaking! Allow the picture to engage for you. Check out these 11 Free and Awesome Image Resources for your next Presentation if you’re looking for an image to wow your audience.

11. Make ’em Laugh

Being professional and informative does not mean you can’t be fun! We all know humor makes everything lighter and better! And there is almost always a way to fit in into any presentation. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4 on the huge projector screen (which looked like an exact duplicate of the iPhone 3) he joked, “Stop me if you’ve seen this before.” He knew the audience anticipated a grand new design so he beat them to the punch with a short quip.

12. Tell a Story

We listen to people when we connect to them and we connect to them through telling stories . Why? Because telling stories builds trust. You are sharing a part of you that you may not necessarily share with everyone. A personal story is the fastest way to build trust, show you are human and stir emotion. The emotion can be laughter, sadness or tears, it doesn’t matter, by conveying your message through a narration you have paved the way for any subject or topic. Just ask Jacob Barnett , the 14-year-old astrophysicist who was labeled as autistic. He shows you how society can be dead wrong as he takes you along his journey from outcast to prodigy.

13. How to Pick the Story You Tell

Pick a story your audience can relate to; If you are marketing a product or advertising a service this can be difficult, but luckily you are presenting to fellow students! So put your brain in their brain.

For instance, if you are presenting to college students, what do they like, what do they fear… I can list a few now: College is when you are on your own, when you fall in love, when you gain the ‘Freshman 15’ or join your first gym. You learn about what subjects make you passionate and how exams can steal your sleep. How does one of these experiences connect to your presentation topic?

14. Aristotle’s Golden Rule of Three

This trick is taught to college freshmen in Business 101. Aristotle stated it simply in his book ‘Rhetoric’: After learning something new, people tend to remember three things. That means that your audience members will take away only three important points from your 10 or 15-minute presentation. So don’t stress on the finer details. Of course, it is important to have the right data, but your goal is simple — educate the audience on a new idea, a solution or the main research of your topic, not the fine print. You should repeat the main ideas throughout your presentation and summarize them at the end so that the important points stick!

15. Arrive Early with Technical Backup

The best way to avoid a bad situation is to take preventative measures. Check your presentation software that morning, make a backup, upload it to Dropbox and bring an MP4. Then make ANOTHER BACKUP. When you arrive at the class check that all technical items, such as the computer and projector hook up and work efficiently. This step does wonders to relieve speaking anxiety!

16. Preparation Equals Confidence

You need to research and understand your topic… and actually find something about your topic that you can connect to; Unfortunately, PowerPoint and slideshows in general, make people believe that throwing a bunch of words onto a slide makes you an expert. But, If you don’t know the information that you’re presenting, the audience will pick up on it. KNOWING YOUR CONTENT is the best pre-game confidence booster!

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17. own it, pride and apologies.

You may not be the researcher who came up with the stats but you took a topic, organized it, and summarized the data… be proud. If an audience member or professor points out a mistake or asks a question you are unsure of – own it! Apologize if you are incorrect and praise the questioner! You can say, “wow, you make a good point, Thank you, I just learned something new” or “ Great question, I’m not sure of the answer I’ll look it up later and get back to you with the results.” Confidence and humility taste better than peanut butter and jelly (well, it’s pretty close).

There you have it, just follow these 17 killer presentation tips and you will surely be the student that stands out! (And by the way, the takeaway from the soap presentation was that too much cleanliness can actually make us sick… a message was presented so well, it has stuck with me ever since)!

What’s your favorite tip? Do have any additional presentation tricks that have worked for you!? We’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

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Nirel Matsil

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8 Tips to Power-Up Your Classroom Presentations

Last month, I attended a Back to School Night for parents, sitting through presentation after presentation by teachers, some with slides that helped make their presentation a delight to listen to, and others . . . well, that's why I'm writing this blog post.

The goal of a classroom presentation is to aid you in effectively conveying information in a way that allows students (or their parents) to remember what you said. Unfortunately, for some, the presentation becomes a crutch, and they begin to rely on the slides to tell their story, rather than to help them tell the story.

I've been creating presentations using software like PowerPoint and KeyNote for 20 years, and I've learned a lot about how to most effectively communicate. Here's what I've found.

1. Use as Many Slides as You Need

It's a common myth that better presentations use fewer slides. This is simply not the case. I once sent an education conference presentation to the organizers so they could preview it in advance of my speaking. They wrote back, concerned that my 45-minute presentation had 116 slides. I looked it over and realized they were right! I revised it and sent a presentation with 135 slides back to them. I finished my talk with 5 minutes to spare -- just enough time to take questions -- and the presentation was a huge success.

The number of slides in your presentation is irrelevant. What matters is how well your slides communicate and how much time you spend talking about each slide. Spending five minutes on five slides will almost always be more engaging to your students than spending five minutes on a single slide, even when the information is exactly the same.

In the movie Amadeus , the Emperor of Austria complains to Mozart that his music has "too many notes." Mozart responds, "There are just as many notes as are required. Neither more nor less." Use as many slides as you need to make your point. No more. No less.

2. Minimize Verbosity

Your slides are there to support what you are saying, not to say it for you. Keep your word count low, and only place one main point on a slide, plus three to five sub-points if absolutely needed. Remember tip #1 above -- don't be afraid to use more slides. They're free! Also, the language in your slides doesn't need to be in complete sentences. Pare the text to as few words as possible, using what's there only to emphasize and reinforce -- not replace -- the words coming out of your mouth.

3. Maximize Visuals

Photos, figures and icons work as visual memory triggers. They help your students remember what it is you're saying. Any time you can add a visual that helps illustrate or reinforce the points you're making in your slides, you should use it. One great way to do this on the cheap is to use public domain or creative commons photos you can find on Flickr or Google .

4. Reduce Noise

Many teachers like to add banners, headers, footers, page numbers and more noise to their slides. Unless the information needs to be on every slide for a vital reason (which is rare), you should remove it. All these redundant elements do is create distractions from the content of your slides. I find this to be especially true of page numbers. Imagine if a movie included a time code at the bottom, constantly reminding you how long you had been watching. All this does is serve to take the viewer out of the moment. Page numbers in slides really don't provide any useful information -- they just remind your students how long they've been watching.

Pursuant to tips #1 and #2, you're not going to win awards by cramming the most content on the fewest slides. Make text and visuals as large as you can. Not only does this make them easier to see and read, but larger images and text make a greater impact to aid memory. There's nothing wrong with filling an entire slide with a photo, and then placing text right on top. You may have to use a transparent background immediately behind the text so that it's clearly readable, but the overall effect is almost always more memorable than just some text beside an image.

6. Highlight What You Are Talking About

While you are presenting, your students may be momentarily distracted taking notes, thinking about what you are saying, glancing out the window, possibly even daydreaming. When they refocus on your slides, though, they need to quickly pick back up where you are, or you risk losing them again.

• Use contrast or call-outs to clearly show the area of the slide you are talking about.
• Reveal bullet points or table rows one at a time so that the last one visible is the one you are talking about.
• Use arrows, circles or other pointers to show what you are referencing in specific parts of an illustration, photo or graph.
• Animate and reveal parts of illustrations and graphs (where possible) to build your story rather than showing everything at once.
• Use bold type or different colors to highlight the keywords in any lengthy text.

7. Transition Changes

Humans suffer from an affliction called change blindness -- we have a hard time seeing changes unless there is a clear transition between the states. This is especially a problem in presentations where slides may look very much alike. Most programs include transitions that can be used between slides or on elements in the slides themselves.

My favorite transition is the cross-dissolve -- where the first slide fades down while the next slide fades up -- but different transitions can help illustrate points in your presentation. Are you talking about combustion or the fire of London? Use a flame transition. Talking about photography or Hollywood movies? Use the flashbulb transition. Even "cheesy" transitions help overcome change blindness and aid student memory at the same time.

8. Repeat Yourself Redundantly

It’s OK to repeat the same slide more than once -- especially when using images -- if you are reminding students of an earlier point. Obviously, this is not a license to be monotonous. However, if you want to tie separate ideas together, emphasize a point or splash in a little comic relief, it's perfectly fine to repeat a slide.

Bonus Tip: Make it Funny!

There's little doubt that emotional responses can aid memory. While it can be difficult to apply this power in a classroom slide presentation, humor is easy enough, and adding a bit of levity to your presentations at the right points can work to give students vital memory hooks.

Remember, the point of presentation slides is not to replace you as the teacher, but to help your students understand and remember what you are teaching. Overwhelming them with too much information can be just as harmful as underwhelming them with too little.

12 Fun Presentation Ideas for Your Next PowerPoint Night

• The Speaker Lab
• May 22, 2024

Table of Contents

PowerPoint presentations aren’t always for boardroom meetings. Sometimes, they’re a great way to shake things up and have some fun. For instance, maybe you’re a teacher trying to come up with fun ways to practice impromptu speeches. Or maybe you’re in leadership and looking for a way to work in some team building exercises .

Whatever your goal, we have 12 fun PowerPoint presentation ideas for you to use. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a first-time presenter, these themes are guaranteed to bring the laughs and make your night one to remember. No need for comedy chops or design skills—all you need is a dash of creativity, a bit of courage, and a readiness to have a blast.

How to Host a PowerPoint Night

If you’re committed to making this PowerPoint night a reality, you’ll first want to make sure you have the logistics sorted out before jumping into fun presentation ideas. Using our foolproof tips, you can ensure your PowerPoint party is a smashing success. From choosing the perfect theme to keeping the laughs coming all night long, we have you covered.

Choosing a Theme

First things first, you need to pick a theme. This will help guide your guests as they create their presentations. Choose a broad theme that allows for creative interpretation, such as “Unpopular Opinions” or “Conspiracy Theories.” This way, everyone can put their own spin on it and bring something unique to the table.

Creating a Presentation Template

In order to keep things cohesive, it’s a good idea to provide a basic template for your guests to use. Create a Google Slides template with a consistent color scheme and font. This will help maintain visual consistency throughout the night and make it easier for those who may not be as design-savvy to focus on their content.

Encouraging Participation

In some cases, not everyone is going to jump at the chance to create a PowerPoint presentation in their free time. That’s why it’s important to encourage participation. Offer incentives like a prize for the most creative presentation or a “People’s Choice Award” voted on by the audience. A little friendly competition can help participants engage more.

Sharing Presentations

When it comes to the actual presentation night, you want to make sure everything runs smoothly. Use a platform like Google Slides or Prezi that allows for easy sharing and collaboration. This way, you can seamlessly transition between presentations without any awkward lulls. And if you have friends who can’t make it in person, they can still join in on the fun remotely.

Remember, for each of these suggestions, they’re just that—suggestions. Based on the vibe and size of your group, you may want to tweak these suggestions to allow for more creativity and fun. If you’re not sure how to strike the balance between creativity and structure, just experiment and ask for feedback for your participants.

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Fun Presentation Ideas for Your Next PowerPoint Night

PowerPoint nights offer a fun-filled opportunity to strengthen friendships while letting your imagination run wild . If you’re searching for inspiration for your next PowerPoint night, look no further. Below, we’ve compiled fun presentation ideas that will help your crew grow and laugh together!

Bucket List

Forget boring old bucket lists—it’s time to level up with this PowerPoint presentation. Gather your squad and get ready to share your craziest dreams and aspirations. Skydiving? Learning to cook like a pro? Finally writing that novel? Create a presentation showcasing your ultimate bucket list items and the reasons why they matter to you. Not only will it be a blast, but you might just inspire each other to start making those dreams come true.

Dog Breeds as People

If you’re a dog lover, then this one’s for you. Imagine if different dog breeds were people. What would their personalities be like? Would a chihuahua be the sassy, high-maintenance friend who always needs to be the center of attention? Would a golden retriever be the loyal, always-down-for-a-good-time pal? Compare different dog breeds to human personality types and get ready for some laughs—especially if you decide to create some art for your slides.

Celebrity Lookalikes

We’ve all gotten the “you look like so-and-so” comment at some point. Well, now’s your chance to lean into it. Have everyone find their celebrity doppelganger and create a side-by-side comparison slide. Bonus points if you dress up as your celebrity twin for the presentation.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. A mood board, however, is the perfect way to express yourself without saying a thing. Design a mood board that represents your current state of mind, goals, or aesthetic. Incorporate images, quotes, and colors that capture the essence of your chosen theme. It’s like a window into your soul, but with way better visuals.

Social Media Profiles

Social media is a wild place. But have you ever wondered what it would be like if historical figures or fictional characters had their own profiles? Now’s your chance to find out. Create a mock social media profile for a famous person from the past or a beloved character, complete with status updates, likes, and comments that align with their personality. It’s like fan fiction, but with a 21st-century twist.

Fun Interactive Ideas for Your Presentation

There are plenty of fun presentation ideas out there, but what about interactive ones? Luckily for you, we have some in store. The best part is you don’t need a Hollywood budget or a degree in computer science to make it happen. All it takes is a dash of creativity and some smart planning, and you’ll be delivering top-notch interactive presentations in no time.

Childhood Photos

Liven up your next presentation with this interactive idea: request childhood photos from your audience beforehand. Incorporate these snapshots into your slides, and create a story that ties all of them together. Your audience will love the personal touch, and it’ll spark conversations and connections that last long after the presentation ends. Afterwards, you can even have people share the background behind their photo(s). Not only does this fun presentation idea allow people to share nostalgic stories, but it also gives people the chance to learn about the others better.

Unpopular Opinions

Another fun interactive presentation idea is to poll your audience on their unpopular opinions. This works especially well if you’re already presenting on a topic that people tend to have strong feelings about, like politics or pop culture. Create a list of controversial statements related to your topic, then ask your audience to vote on whether they agree or disagree with each one.

For instance, say you’re giving a presentation on social media marketing, and you decide to poll the audience on statements like “Instagram outshines Twitter.” In addition to engaging your audience, throwing in a few interactive polls can also help you gauge what they already know about your topic.

Conspiracy Theories

Here’s a pro tip: if you want to make your presentation unforgettable, then ask your audience about conspiracy theories connected to your topic. People love sharing their favorite theories, and it’s a fantastic way to break the ice and get everyone talking. Take those theories and run with them—you’ll be surprised at how much fun everyone has.

For instance, say you’re giving a presentation on media literacy. By asking people to share the wildest conspiracy theory they’ve ever heard, you can then break down the elements that made it seem compelling (even if it wasn’t true). You can then use conspiracy theories as a way to talk about the importance of critical thinking. It’s a fun way to get people thinking about how media messages are constructed and how to spot misinformation.

Here’s the secret to making interactive presentation ideas work: keep them on-topic and audience-appropriate. Quizzes and polls are awesome, but only if they drive home your key points. And here’s the really important part—have fun up there! After all, if you’re loving what you’re talking about, your audience will too.

Powerpoint Night Theme Ideas for Your Friend Group

When it comes to planning a PowerPoint night with your besties, the possibilities are endless. But sometimes, having too many options can be overwhelming. That’s where themed nights come in clutch.

Selecting a theme for your PowerPoint party isn’t just about limiting the scope of presentation topics; it’s a chance to inject more fun and originality into the event. It also provides a unique opportunity to strengthen your bond with your friend group by learning about their experiences and interests. Let’s take a look at some fun theme ideas for your next PowerPoint presentation night.

Favorite Memory

Take a trip down memory lane and have each friend share their favorite memory with the group. It could be a hilarious inside joke, an epic adventure you all went on together, or a heartwarming moment that brought you closer.

TV Characters You Relate To

We all have that one TV character that we see a little bit of ourselves in. Have each friend choose a character they identify with most and explain why. It could be a shared personality trait, a similar life experience, or just a general vibe.

Lessons Learned

Life is full of ups and downs, and sometimes the most valuable lessons come from the hardest experiences. Have each friend share a life lesson they’ve learned and how it’s impacted them. It could be a lesson about love, friendship, career, or personal growth. The key is to be vulnerable and honest.

Create a “Starter Pack”

Starter packs are a popular meme format that typically include a collection of items, traits, or experiences that are associated with a particular type of person or group. Have each friend create a starter pack meme that represents their personality, interests, or quirks. It’s a fun way to sum up who you are in a visual way and bond over your shared (or contrasting) starter packs.

The beauty of PowerPoint nights is that there are no rules. No matter which theme you choose, the most important thing is to have fun and let your creativity shine.

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Tips for Making Your PowerPoint Night Memorable

If it’s your first time hosting a PowerPoint night, then we have some tips to make sure yours runs smoothly. We’re not just talking fun presentation ideas, but ways to make the whole event exciting and engaging. Let’s take a look at some of these tips.

Incorporating Music

A good playlist can set the tone for the entire night and keep the energy up between presentations. Consider creating a collaborative playlist ahead of time and ask everyone to add a few songs that fit the theme of the night. That way, everyone feels like they’re part of the process and you get a diverse mix of tunes.

Adding Humor

Of course, the most important element of any Powerpoint night is humor. The whole point is to make people laugh, so don’t be afraid to get a little weird with it. Encourage people to use memes, GIFs, and inside jokes in their presentations.

Encouraging Storytelling

Never forget the magic of a good story. The most unforgettable PowerPoint night presentations are the ones where the presenter opens up and shares personal tales and experiences. It’s an amazing opportunity to deepen your bonds with friends and create a warm, intimate atmosphere that brings everyone closer together.

At the end of the day, the most memorable PowerPoint nights are the ones where everyone feels like they’re part of something special. So don’t be afraid to get creative, take risks, and let your personality shine through. With a little bit of planning and a lot of laughter, your PowerPoint night is sure to be a fun one.

FAQs on Fun Presentation Ideas

What can i make a fun presentation about.

Dive into “A Day as Your Pet” or explore “If Historical Figures Had Instagram.” Keep it light and funny.

What is an interesting topic for presentation?

“The Science of Superheroes” hooks almost anyone. It’s cool, quirky, and sparks imagination.

How to creatively present a presentation?

Mix in memes, tell stories instead of listing facts, and maybe even throw in a mini-quiz. Engage your audience.

What is a good 5 minute presentation?

Pick something like “Weird Laws Around the World.” It’s snappy, surprising, and easy to chat about quickly.

And there you have it—12 fun presentation ideas that’ll take your next PowerPoint night to the next level. Whether you’re bonding over cringey childhood memories or debating the merits of your favorite conspiracy theories, these themes are sure to bring the laughs and create some unforgettable moments with your friends.

Remember, the key to a successful PowerPoint night is to let your personality shine through. Don’t be afraid to get a little weird, a little vulnerable, and a whole lot creative. Your friends will love you for it, and you might just discover a hidden talent for comedy along the way.

So what are you waiting for? Pick a theme, fire up your favorite presentation software, and get ready to wow your crowd with your hilarious PowerPoint skills. Trust us, your friends will be begging for an encore performance in no time!

• Last Updated: May 23, 2024

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What Makes a Good Presentation? How to Make a PowerPoint 101

Clémence Daniere

Table of contents

How to create a powerpoint presentation, presentation tips and tricks.

• Create a Video to Share Your Slides After Your Presentation 

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Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and other slide presentations have become an absolutely essential part of any presentation.

They’re easy to use, offer a great way to combine images, video, and text, and require almost no training.

So, why are so many presentations so boring?

All the elements are there for creating effective, eye-catching, and engaging presentations, but so often we’re forced to sit through slide after slide of overcrowded, hard-to-read text and fuzzy (or non-existent) images.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to make your presentations dazzle with just a few easy tips.

Your slide deck has the power to add to or take away from the overall effectiveness of your presentation. Learning how to make a presentation more interesting requires skillful collaboration between the strength of your content and knowing how to make your slides look good. 

So, before you open PowerPoint, let’s go through some basics.

Less is more

Less is more with slide content.  

Your slides should not be stuffed with content, especially text-heavy content. Incorporating bullet points helps your audience follow your message without getting distracted by trying to read the slide.

Use engaging slide designs

You don’t have to start from scratch with every presentation! Chances are, you are not a graphic designer so why not use the templates that have been created by professionals ? 

Using presentation templates can help you make PowerPoint slides, Google slides, or slides for other platforms as well without spending too much time trying to create a professional look. 

You can easily find templates online through Slidesgo and Slidescarnival for Google Slides and for PowerPoint. Each of these platforms offers themes within their software as well. 

All you’ll need to do is make minor adjustements to the design!

Be on-brand

Using consistent branding is an easy way to build familiarity and trust with your audience. If you have an established brand in place be sure to use it when building your slides.  

The colors and fonts used in your design should always adhere to your brand standards without deviation. 

If you don’t have a brand guide to work from, select a specific color palette, using color theory to ensure the message of your presentation is not counteracted by your color choices. 

Stick with just a few colors, and go the same route with fonts. Only choose a few to use, and avoid overly scripted options as they are difficult to read on screen.

Use visual aids

Visuals make a huge difference in your presentations. But there are a few rules to follow.

Stick with high-quality images. Adding images to your slides that are blurry, pixelated, or otherwise low in quality is an easy way to quickly disengage with your audience.

If you don’t have access to high-quality branded photos, use sites like Unsplash and Shutterstock .

Plus, adding screenshots can make your presentation more interesting than stock photos. 

Add screenshots to your presentations with Snagit

Snagit makes it easy to capture and edit the perfect screenshot!

Share data analytics or upcoming project plans by taking a simple screenshot. Screenshots are the perfect addition to your presentations.

Third-party tools like Snagit are made just for that. You can add callouts , arrows , and other tools that draw your audience’s attention . 

For a more fun visual, use GIFs to highlight some key points.

GIFs are a great middle-ground option between static images and videos. They can be used effectively to drive home a specific point or to highlight a specific piece of data.  

Visuals always help with memorability and GIFs usually include a touch of humor and personality – both qualities that help information stick.

You can make your own GIFs using Snagit so that they are perfectly catered to your presentation.

We live in a video world. Embedding videos directly into your slides can play a role in creating an interesting presentation. 

Videos can be an easy way to show a tutorial or demonstrate a process. Whatever your presentation is about, there are videos you can make or outsource that will support your point.

However, using too many videos can take away the impact your own content has. Try to stick to three or fewer videos in one presentation. 

According to Forbes , thirty to sixty seconds is ideal for a presentation video.

You want your visual aids to support your presentation, not take over it. The focus of your presentation should still be you and the value you are bringing to your audience!

For your presentation to shine, you need to combine storytelling, authenticity, and visual aids.  

Basically, it’s all about what you say and how you say it.

Tell a story 

Often times when we think about how to make an effective presentation, we focus on the visuals. We add animations and transitions, hoping that will keep our audience engaged. 

If most of your attention and time is spent on design, you are missing out on a key element that is crucial for making presentations interesting – the story. 

The best presentations draw in their viewers with a relatable narrative, but the narrative also helps the presentation to gain memorability as well. 

You should be spending a large portion of your preparation time crafting your content – the actual information you will be sharing and how you will be sharing it. It doesn’t matter how good your slide designs are if they aren’t supporting compelling content. 

You don’t have to weave an epic tale for your presentation, but if you are looking to make your presentation interesting you need to incorporate some storytelling aspects, like personal connection and impact.

To achieve your purpose, you’ll need an outline. That way, your purpose is kept at the center of your presentation and you follow a familiar structure. You need to make sure that you have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Just like a regular story!

Presentations that are interesting from beginning to end take the audience on a journey. Steer away from reciting facts and from long tangents. Find a middle ground that’s personable and informative!

To create an interesting presentation, be sure you structure your content in a way that makes it easy to tell the story and provide your audience with a journey that is relevant and memorable. 

Be authentic and engaging

A key point that often gets forgotten when preparing presentations? YOU are the presentation.  

Leslie Chamberlain , Senior Director, Customer Education explains on The Visual Lounge Podcast :

“What it comes down to. Whenever you’re doing any kind of presentation, whether you’re doing it on a video, whether you’re doing it in front of folks in person, it comes down to your audience is building the relationship with you. Your slides, your images are not the presentation. You are the presentation. So as you go forward to present, be true to yourself, speak from your heart, and enjoy every minute of it.”

Lean into the parts of your personality that best serve the presentation’s purpose. Tell personal stories, speak in the same manner you normally do, and be open. Public speaking is always a little daunting, but with confidence, you can achieve anything!

Your body language should be easygoing, so try to use natural hand gestures and smile. Make sure to maintain eye contact with audience members. It will create a bond between you and them, which will increase their confidence in you.

Your energy is contagious. To make your presentation more interesting, you’ve got to bring the right energy. 

High-energy presenters get more engagement from their audiences while coming in with low energy is a surefire way to destroy any hope of engagement, regardless of how good a story you have crafted with your presentation’s content. 

Memorize your content rather than relying on reading your slides, and be sure to use different speeds and volumes throughout the presentation to make it more interesting, draw attention to specific points, and present authentically.

And don’t forget to use organic visuals in your presentation to support your purpose and drive home the information you’re sharing. 

Create a Video to Share Your Slides After Your Presentation 

To wrap it up, you can make a video of your presentation. That way, you’ll be able to use it again in the future without going through the hassle of presenting over and over.

To do so, you can simply video record your screen and your camera. With Snagit, you can do so easily and use some fun tools like Screen Draw to direct attention to certain parts of your slides. 

Record and share your presentation with Snagit

Snagit makes it easy to record your screen, camera, and audio for the perfect presentation setup!

Once you’re done recording and making simple edits, send the video as a link through Screencast. Hit the Share Link button to create a unique link to your video. Then, send it out to anyone who might’ve missed your presentation!

This is also a great way to get feedback on your presentation before it happens. Record a mock-up presentation using Snagit, and send it to your team for honest, constructive criticism. That way, your presentation will be so much better when the day comes!

Additional Resources

Synchronous vs. asynchronous communication: a guide, email will never die. here’s how to make it better, information overload is real: here’s how to manage it.

HUGH CULVER

Author, speaker, coach, 10 easy ways to make any powerpoint presentation awesome.

Updated to Speaking on May 3, 2023.

This post was updated in 2023.

It was 20 minutes before lunch, my client was frantically looking at the clock, and the audience was squirming. We had suffered through endless forgettable PowerPoint slides and were all hoping for a merciful end. That’s when the presenter announced, “I see I’m running out of time, so I’ll just hurry through my last 30 slides.”

We’ve all suffered through slide shows with long lists of unreadable bullets, unnecessary YouTube clips, and overuse of graphics. Instead of holding our attention and making their point even stronger, each slide distracts the audience with more content they don’t need. Bad slides are agnostic. You can use PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, Google Slides, or hold up a piece of paper – it’s all a distraction if you don’t do it well.

Done well, a thoughtfully prepared slide deck can be the perfect slide dish for your full meal presentation. Done poorly and your audience will feel like they made one too many trips to the buffet table. This post will help you do it well.

For the first years of my speaking career, I presented with 35mm slides. You know, the photographs framed by cardboard that got jammed in the projector? That was me – hauling out the projector, clicking in the carousel, and praying that tonight it would all work. I soon learned that the more slides I showed the less the audience listened to me. So I cut back on the slides. I also noticed that when I switched to a black screen (see #9) the audience turned all their attention to me. So I practiced fading to black whenever I told a story or had an important point to make.

How I started

When I switched to PowerPoint I suddenly had a candy shop full of treats to sweeten my presentations with. And I started making all the same mistakes again: too many slides, too much content on each slide, and too distracting. After every presentation I always do a quick debrief – what worked, what needs to change? And slowly I developed a checklist for slide presentations.

I have shared with checklist with hundreds of speakers to help put the spotlight on them. Some were designing a new speech, some were preparing for a webinar and others needed slides to back up a video presentation. In every case, this checklist made their presentation better. They sold more products, got more referrals, and, in most cases, spent a lot less time working on their slide deck.

If you’ve ever struggled to create interesting slides or worry your slides are too wordy or you have too many of them, this will help.

Here are my 10 easy ways to make any PowerPoint presentation awesome.

1. Build your slides last

This might be the most important rule on the list. Don’t build your slide deck until you build your presentation.

You could be tempted to start monkeying with slides early in your speech writing process – after all, it’s a fun way to procrastinate from all that hard thinking – don’t. Building your slide deck before you build your presentation is like building a road before you know where it’s going.

Your slides are there to ADD to a well-designed speech, not to replace it.

2. Don’t try to replace you

People come to hear you. If you are launching your service on a webinar, they want to know how this solution has helped you and whether is it right for them. If you are delivering a keynote speech or workshop, they want a glimpse into your solutions that can help move them forward in their work or in life.

Fancy transitions, superfluous video clips, and endless bullet points will get your audience’s attention, but take their attention off of you. Every time you hit the clicker the audience leaves you and goes to the screen.

Your goal for every presentation is to deliver the goods, not the slides.

3. Use a consistent theme

We are easily distracted and confused. That’s why brands always anchor advertising on their unique colors, fonts, slogan, or a jingle. They know that consistency in their brand theme builds recognition and puts more attention on the message. You should do that with your slides.

Start with a simple, white background and san serif fonts.

A consistent, simple theme helps your audience focus on the content of each slide. Watch TED talks that have gone viral to see how simple a slide theme can be, like the ones by Dan Pink The puzzle of motivation (30M views), and Shawn Achor The happy secret to better work (25M views).

4. More images, less text

Want to quickly reenergize a tired slide deck? Make your images larger ( in this post I share where to get free images ) and reduce the text size. Remember, the theme in this post is that you are the presentation, not your slides.

Your brain can process images 60,000 times faster than text. When you use images (and less text) you allow your audience to process the image without distracting them away from your powerful story, or making a critical point. Like subtle mood music in the background of a dramatic movie scene, images can augment and enhance what you are saying without stealing the show.

5. One story per slide

When I started using PowerPoint I would have 60 to 80 slides for a 60-minute speech. It was a lot of work to prepare each deck and when I was deep into the speech I would sometimes forget where I was and have to jump forward a couple of slides.

Then it became 30-35 slides and I could breathe easier, knowing that fewer clicks meant less to worry about. As my confidence grew it became 10-12 slides and each slide became a key part of storytelling or point-making—they had to earn their place.

I might use a slide as a backdrop to a story or for a short list that supports a lesson I’m delivering. Either way, it’s always on ‘story’ per slide. If I don’t need a slide, I fade to black (#9).

But, I always stick to one story per slide.

6. Reveal one bullet at a time

This is an easy one – reveal one bullet at a time. The function of bullets is to reinforce (not replace) what you are delivering. That’s why they need to be short (see the 2/4/8 rule, below). A good bullet point is complete on it’s own, but much better when combined with a live presentation of it. Here’s an example from a list of (very wordy) time management strategies:

• Infrequent visits to your Inbox give you more time for deep work
• time blocking allows you to protect time for important work
• the Pomodoro technique can help you focus with fewer distractions

A better list – like one you might use on a PowerPoint slide – would be:

• visit your Inbox less often
• block time for important work
• the Pomodoro technique helps you focus

To reveal one bullet at a time in PowerPoint, right-click on your text box, select Custom Animation > Add Entrance Effect and then choose the effect you want. In Keynote, click Animate > Build in and choose the effect you want.

7. Leave the fireworks to Disney

It’s great that you know how to turn text into flames and make images spin with the click of your mouse – but leave those fireworks to Disney. Your job is to make your content the star of the show. Every time you haul the audience’s attention away to some animation you lose a truckload of opportunity to help them.

Your slides can still be amazing and helpful, but that should always be secondary to your primary purpose of helping people. Simple transitions, clean, san serif fonts, and large, attractive graphics trump PowerPoint tricks, every time.

8. The 2/4/8 rule

When I am advising other speakers I often don’t know their topic—certainly not as well as they do. So I rely on certain rules I have developed over many years. For slide decks, I use my 2/4/8 rule. Here’s how it goes…

• about every 2 minutes I have a new slide (that’s 30 slides for a 60-minute speech),
• no more than 4 bullets per slide, and
• no more than 8 words per bullet.

Just like any recipe, you can mess with the ingredient a bit. If your content is more technical, you might need more slides. Sometimes I need 5 or 6 bullets. I use the 2/4/8 rule to remind me that slides are there to support what I have to say, not replace me.

9. Fade to black

The last time I was shopping for a car, I noticed the salesperson had a clever technique. While he asked how I liked the car and if I had any questions, he kept his sales offer face-down on the table. Because there were no other distractions, he had my full attention. And when it was time to reveal his offer, it was much more dramatic (so was the price!) Use the same technique with your slides.

When you fade to black you regain your audience’s attention. For example, after I present a solution, I’ll fade to black while I expound on how to apply that solution in my audience’s work/life. When I’m finished, I turn black off and go to the next point. Or if I’m halfway through a story I’ll fade to back before the punchline so I know I have everyone’s attention.

It’s no different than a close-up scene in a movie—the director wants you to focus only on the speaker. Note that if you are shopping for a slide remote, be sure that yours has the black screen feature.

10. When in doubt, delete

This might be the most advice I can leave you with. When in doubt, delete it.

There is a weird attraction to more. Authors add more pages thinking it makes the book more valuable. Sales people who talk too much miss the opportunity to ask for the sale. And presenters add more slides thinking it will make them look better. Wrong.

When you are doing the final edits on your slide deck, the ultimate question you should be asking about each slide is, “Will it make my speech better?” If not, dump it.

Remember, nobody will miss what isn’t there. Also fewer slides allows you more time for side stories, spontaneous thoughts or even time for Q&A.

Remember this…

I’ve said it numerous times in this post, but it’s worth repeating. You are the show, not your slides. More slides means more time your audience is not paying attention to you. Fewer (and better) slides means you have more time to build rapport, share memorable stories, explain your solutions and motivate your audience to action. You are there for a reason. Now go and deliver.

One last thing. Spend the $80 and pack a remote (with spare batteries.) Nothing’s worse than watching a speaker repeatedly lean over, hunt for the right key, and then peck away to advance the slides.

If you enjoyed this article, here is more about presentation skills:

How the experts create world-class PowerPoint Slides (and you can too) PowerPoint Primer – the only 3 slides you’ll ever need How to add video to PowerPoint and Keynote like a pro

Slide by  Nathan Anderson  on  Unsplash

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How to Make a Presentation Fun

Last Updated: February 5, 2022 Approved

This article was co-authored by Lynn Kirkham . Lynn Kirkham is a Professional Public Speaker and Founder of Yes You Can Speak, a San Francisco Bay Area-based public speaking educational business empowering thousands of professionals to take command of whatever stage they've been given - from job interviews, boardroom talks to TEDx and large conference platforms. Lynn was chosen as the official TEDx Berkeley speaker coach for the last four years and has worked with executives at Google, Facebook, Intuit, Genentech, Intel, VMware, and others. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 11 testimonials and 91% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 275,615 times.

Everyone has sat through at least one dry and boring presentation. Not only do boring talks put the audience to sleep, but they also struggle to effectively communicate the material to the audience in a meaningful way. There are ways to make any presentation fun, even if it's not the most exciting topic in the world. To give a fun presentation, be sure to adequately prepare the material, engage with the audience, and entertain the audience throughout.

Creating an Effective Presentation

• For example, if you are asked to present on ethics in business, for a university business class you are likely not an expert on the topic. However, you should still thoroughly research the topic and communicate to your classmates why this is an important topic.
• Keep in mind why you are presenting on the topic and what should be achieved at the end of the presentation.

• For example, if you are giving a presentation on how to engage with social media, you should begin by outlining different social media platforms. Then explain how each one works, and then provide more detailed information concerning different types of posts, when to post, how to respond to comment etc.

• If you are teaching an undergraduate class in geography, for example, you may want to spend some time defining the difference between human geography and physical geography.
• Often these definitions will warrant their slide if you are using visual aids.

• Google Slides

• If you are giving a lecture in history you may want to provide video footage of the event you are discussing, for example, the Vietnam War or Iron Curtain Speech.
• You could also use a recent clip from a television show to highlight a specific point you are trying to make in your presentation. Be creative.

Engaging With Your Audience

• Ask questions that people can answer by raising their hand. For example, you could ask, “how many people in the audience are bloggers?” This will engage the audience without putting them on the spot to talk, and is a great way to ask questions when you have a large audience.
• Give out treats when people answer questions correctly. For example, you could hand out a lollipop or chocolate bar each time some answers a question correctly. This may motivate people to engage with the material and participate frequently.
• Put questions in a bowl at the front of the room and have audience members pick them out at random. This is a creative way to ask questions and helps to involve audience members in the presentation.

• Having audience members read out information or explain certain points.
• Asking audience members to help hand out additional material.
• Allowing audience members to help with a demonstration.

• Allow audience members to raise their hand and ask questions at any point.
• Periodically ask the audience if anyone has a question. Typically, this should be done at the end of a specific section or segment of the presentation.
• Set aside time for questions at the very end of the presentation.

Entertaining Your Audience

• If you are standing on a stage, there's nothing stopping you from getting off and walking through the audience as you present.
• Be aware of the volume of your voice. In a large auditorium, you may need to speak louder to be heard in the back.

• Know your audience: You should know the general age and interests of the audience members to ensure that the joke is not offensive and that they will understand the joke. For example, avoid making references to the television show Frasier if you are presenting to high school students. They will not get the joke.
• Use safe humor: Avoid using the audience as the butt of the joke or dividing the audience (ie joking about women or blondes), or using offensive language. Instead, you can use gentle self-deprecating humor. You could say "I know you all rushed here to listen to a presentation on making photocopies." This joke allows you to acknowledge in a sarcastic way the dry nature of the topic you are presenting on.
• Integrate the humor into your presentation: The best way to include jokes in a presentation is to stay on topic. Try to make sure the joke relates to the material being presented.
• Rehearse the joke: Practice the joke as part of your presentation and test it out on other people before presenting. This allows you to get the timing right and ensure that the joke with get a laugh.

• Avoid only making eye contact with the people you know in the audience or with the person, who is assessing the presentation.

Lynn Kirkham

Eye contact is one of the critical elements of any presentation. Making eye contact with your audience shows that you care about them. Look and smile at individual people to make them feel engaged and make your presentation more enjoyable.

• For example, if you are presenting to a group of high school students about bullying and social media, you may want to draw their attention to a few examples of young celebrities using social media to attack one another. This could help to make the topic more relatable to the young audience by connecting to a story they are familiar with.

Our Expert Agrees: Make your presentation more enjoyable by tying your words back to your audience and what matters to them. Instead of reading off ten bullet points, ask why your presentation is important to your audience, and make the information you provide relevant to that.

Community Q&A

• If you've seen fun presentations done well by others, ask them for advice. Skilled presenters are usually very generous with their ideas and time and will be happy to help you out. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you are fortunate enough to have people in your audience asking questions, or answering questions, always genuinely thank them for doing so. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• No matter how fun your presentation is, it's hard for your audience to concentrate if they are too cold or too hot or visibly exhausted before you begin. Before you start your presentation, check the thermostat in the room and ensure the temperature is comfortable. If your audience looks tired, encourage them to stand up and have a stretch - or even suggest a 2-minute break for people to visit the rest-room, make themselves a coffee, or get some fresh air. If it's possible or appropriate, try to have water and snacks for your audience available. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Jokes are great to keep the mood light and keep your audience engaged. Bad language, racist jokes, and smutty/sexual jokes are not fun. If you want to tell a joke, make sure it's appropriate for your audience. If you think there's a chance it might offend, don't go there. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 0
• If you unload too much on transitions, not a single person will be listening, as everyone would be just looking at your animation. You might as well make a anime. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/presentations/planning-presentation
• ↑ https://www.hamilton.edu/oralcommunication/how-to-engage-your-audience-and-keep-them-with-you
• ↑ https://zapier.com/blog/best-powerpoint-alternatives/#google
• ↑ http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/presentations/visual-aids
• ↑ http://managementhelp.org/blogs/communications/2011/01/02/20-great-ways-to-engage-and-involve-your-audience/
• ↑ http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/presentations/involve
• ↑ http://www.write-out-loud.com/how-to-use-humor-effectively.html

About this article

To make a presentation fun, include some audio and video clips in your presentation, like a clip from a relevant documentary or a song that relates to your topic. You can also include visuals, like charts, graphs, or pictures, to help make your presentation more interesting. As you're presenting, try to engage your audience by asking questions or having a volunteer help with something. You can even hand out fun materials, like a quiz or scavenger hunt. If you're giving a long presentation, consider providing snacks and refreshments at the beginning. To learn how to use humor and stories to make a presentation fun, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Blog Beginner Guides How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

Written by: Krystle Wong Jul 20, 2023

A top-notch presentation possesses the power to drive action. From winning stakeholders over and conveying a powerful message to securing funding — your secret weapon lies within the realm of creating an effective presentation .  

Being an excellent presenter isn’t confined to the boardroom. Whether you’re delivering a presentation at work, pursuing an academic career, involved in a non-profit organization or even a student, nailing the presentation game is a game-changer.

In this article, I’ll cover the top qualities of compelling presentations and walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to give a good presentation. Here’s a little tip to kick things off: for a headstart, check out Venngage’s collection of free presentation templates . They are fully customizable, and the best part is you don’t need professional design skills to make them shine!

These valuable presentation tips cater to individuals from diverse professional backgrounds, encompassing business professionals, sales and marketing teams, educators, trainers, students, researchers, non-profit organizations, public speakers and presenters. 

No matter your field or role, these tips for presenting will equip you with the skills to deliver effective presentations that leave a lasting impression on any audience.

Click to jump ahead:

What are the 10 qualities of a good presentation?

Step-by-step guide on how to prepare an effective presentation, 9 effective techniques to deliver a memorable presentation, faqs on making a good presentation, how to create a presentation with venngage in 5 steps.

When it comes to giving an engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression, it’s not just about the content — it’s also about how you deliver it. Wondering what makes a good presentation? Well, the best presentations I’ve seen consistently exhibit these 10 qualities:

1. Clear structure

No one likes to get lost in a maze of information. Organize your thoughts into a logical flow, complete with an introduction, main points and a solid conclusion. A structured presentation helps your audience follow along effortlessly, leaving them with a sense of satisfaction at the end.

Regardless of your presentation style , a quality presentation starts with a clear roadmap. Browse through Venngage’s template library and select a presentation template that aligns with your content and presentation goals. Here’s a good presentation example template with a logical layout that includes sections for the introduction, main points, supporting information and a conclusion: 

2. Engaging opening

Hook your audience right from the start with an attention-grabbing statement, a fascinating question or maybe even a captivating anecdote. Set the stage for a killer presentation!

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

3. Relevant content

Make sure your content aligns with their interests and needs. Your audience is there for a reason, and that’s to get valuable insights. Avoid fluff and get straight to the point, your audience will be genuinely excited.

4. Effective visual aids

Picture this: a slide with walls of text and tiny charts, yawn! Visual aids should be just that—aiding your presentation. Opt for clear and visually appealing slides, engaging images and informative charts that add value and help reinforce your message.

With Venngage, visualizing data takes no effort at all. You can import data from CSV or Google Sheets seamlessly and create stunning charts, graphs and icon stories effortlessly to showcase your data in a captivating and impactful way.

5. Clear and concise communication

Keep your language simple, and avoid jargon or complicated terms. Communicate your ideas clearly, so your audience can easily grasp and retain the information being conveyed. This can prevent confusion and enhance the overall effectiveness of the message. 

6. Engaging delivery

Spice up your presentation with a sprinkle of enthusiasm! Maintain eye contact, use expressive gestures and vary your tone of voice to keep your audience glued to the edge of their seats. A touch of charisma goes a long way!

7. Interaction and audience engagement

Turn your presentation into an interactive experience — encourage questions, foster discussions and maybe even throw in a fun activity. Engaged audiences are more likely to remember and embrace your message.

Transform your slides into an interactive presentation with Venngage’s dynamic features like pop-ups, clickable icons and animated elements. Engage your audience with interactive content that lets them explore and interact with your presentation for a truly immersive experience.

8. Effective storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story? Weaving relevant anecdotes, case studies or even a personal story into your presentation can captivate your audience and create a lasting impact. Stories build connections and make your message memorable.

A great presentation background is also essential as it sets the tone, creates visual interest and reinforces your message. Enhance the overall aesthetics of your presentation with these 15 presentation background examples and captivate your audience’s attention.

9. Well-timed pacing

Pace your presentation thoughtfully with well-designed presentation slides, neither rushing through nor dragging it out. Respect your audience’s time and ensure you cover all the essential points without losing their interest.

10. Strong conclusion

Last impressions linger! Summarize your main points and leave your audience with a clear takeaway. End your presentation with a bang , a call to action or an inspiring thought that resonates long after the conclusion.

In-person presentations aside, acing a virtual presentation is of paramount importance in today’s digital world. Check out this guide to learn how you can adapt your in-person presentations into virtual presentations . 

Preparing an effective presentation starts with laying a strong foundation that goes beyond just creating slides and notes. One of the quickest and best ways to make a presentation would be with the help of a good presentation software . 

Otherwise, let me walk you to how to prepare for a presentation step by step and unlock the secrets of crafting a professional presentation that sets you apart.

1. Understand the audience and their needs

Before you dive into preparing your masterpiece, take a moment to get to know your target audience. Tailor your presentation to meet their needs and expectations , and you’ll have them hooked from the start!

2. Conduct thorough research on the topic

Time to hit the books (or the internet)! Don’t skimp on the research with your presentation materials — dive deep into the subject matter and gather valuable insights . The more you know, the more confident you’ll feel in delivering your presentation.

3. Organize the content with a clear structure

No one wants to stumble through a chaotic mess of information. Outline your presentation with a clear and logical flow. Start with a captivating introduction, follow up with main points that build on each other and wrap it up with a powerful conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Delivering an effective business presentation hinges on captivating your audience, and Venngage’s professionally designed business presentation templates are tailor-made for this purpose. With thoughtfully structured layouts, these templates enhance your message’s clarity and coherence, ensuring a memorable and engaging experience for your audience members.

Don’t want to build your presentation layout from scratch? pick from these 5 foolproof presentation layout ideas that won’t go wrong. 

4. Develop visually appealing and supportive visual aids

Spice up your presentation with eye-catching visuals! Create slides that complement your message, not overshadow it. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you need to overload your slides with text.

Well-chosen designs create a cohesive and professional look, capturing your audience’s attention and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your message. Here’s a list of carefully curated PowerPoint presentation templates and great background graphics that will significantly influence the visual appeal and engagement of your presentation.

5. Practice, practice and practice

Practice makes perfect — rehearse your presentation and arrive early to your presentation to help overcome stage fright. Familiarity with your material will boost your presentation skills and help you handle curveballs with ease.

6. Seek feedback and make necessary adjustments

Don’t be afraid to ask for help and seek feedback from friends and colleagues. Constructive criticism can help you identify blind spots and fine-tune your presentation to perfection.

With Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature , receiving feedback and editing your presentation is a seamless process. Group members can access and work on the presentation simultaneously and edit content side by side in real-time. Changes will be reflected immediately to the entire team, promoting seamless teamwork.

7. Prepare for potential technical or logistical issues

Prepare for the unexpected by checking your equipment, internet connection and any other potential hiccups. If you’re worried that you’ll miss out on any important points, you could always have note cards prepared. Remember to remain focused and rehearse potential answers to anticipated questions.

8. Fine-tune and polish your presentation

As the big day approaches, give your presentation one last shine. Review your talking points, practice how to present a presentation and make any final tweaks. Deep breaths — you’re on the brink of delivering a successful presentation!

In competitive environments, persuasive presentations set individuals and organizations apart. To brush up on your presentation skills, read these guides on how to make a persuasive presentation and tips to presenting effectively . 

Whether you’re an experienced presenter or a novice, the right techniques will let your presentation skills soar to new heights!

From public speaking hacks to interactive elements and storytelling prowess, these 9 effective presentation techniques will empower you to leave a lasting impression on your audience and make your presentations unforgettable.

1. Confidence and positive body language

Positive body language instantly captivates your audience, making them believe in your message as much as you do. Strengthen your stage presence and own that stage like it’s your second home! Stand tall, shoulders back and exude confidence. 

2. Eye contact with the audience

Break down that invisible barrier and connect with your audience through their eyes. Maintaining eye contact when giving a presentation builds trust and shows that you’re present and engaged with them.

3. Effective use of hand gestures and movement

A little movement goes a long way! Emphasize key points with purposeful gestures and don’t be afraid to walk around the stage. Your energy will be contagious!

4. Utilize storytelling techniques

Weave the magic of storytelling into your presentation. Share relatable anecdotes, inspiring success stories or even personal experiences that tug at the heartstrings of your audience. Adjust your pitch, pace and volume to match the emotions and intensity of the story. Varying your speaking voice adds depth and enhances your stage presence.

5. Incorporate multimedia elements

Spice up your presentation with a dash of visual pizzazz! Use slides, images and video clips to add depth and clarity to your message. Just remember, less is more—don’t overwhelm them with information overload. 

Turn your presentations into an interactive party! Involve your audience with questions, polls or group activities. When they actively participate, they become invested in your presentation’s success. Bring your design to life with animated elements. Venngage allows you to apply animations to icons, images and text to create dynamic and engaging visual content.

6. Utilize humor strategically

Laughter is the best medicine—and a fantastic presentation enhancer! A well-placed joke or lighthearted moment can break the ice and create a warm atmosphere , making your audience more receptive to your message.

7. Practice active listening and respond to feedback

Be attentive to your audience’s reactions and feedback. If they have questions or concerns, address them with genuine interest and respect. Your responsiveness builds rapport and shows that you genuinely care about their experience.

8. Apply the 10-20-30 rule

Apply the 10-20-30 presentation rule and keep it short, sweet and impactful! Stick to ten slides, deliver your presentation within 20 minutes and use a 30-point font to ensure clarity and focus. Less is more, and your audience will thank you for it!

9. Implement the 5-5-5 rule

Simplicity is key. Limit each slide to five bullet points, with only five words per bullet point and allow each slide to remain visible for about five seconds. This rule keeps your presentation concise and prevents information overload.

Simple presentations are more engaging because they are easier to follow. Summarize your presentations and keep them simple with Venngage’s gallery of simple presentation templates and ensure that your message is delivered effectively across your audience.

1. How to start a presentation?

To kick off your presentation effectively, begin with an attention-grabbing statement or a powerful quote. Introduce yourself, establish credibility and clearly state the purpose and relevance of your presentation.

2. How to end a presentation?

For a strong conclusion, summarize your talking points and key takeaways. End with a compelling call to action or a thought-provoking question and remember to thank your audience and invite any final questions or interactions.

3. How to make a presentation interactive?

To make your presentation interactive, encourage questions and discussion throughout your talk. Utilize multimedia elements like videos or images and consider including polls, quizzes or group activities to actively involve your audience.

In need of inspiration for your next presentation? I’ve got your back! Pick from these 120+ presentation ideas, topics and examples to get started. 

Creating a stunning presentation with Venngage is a breeze with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and professionally designed templates for all your communication needs. 

Here’s how to make a presentation in just 5 simple steps with the help of Venngage:

Step 1: Sign up for Venngage for free using your email, Gmail or Facebook account or simply log in to access your account. 

Step 2: Pick a design from our selection of free presentation templates (they’re all created by our expert in-house designers).

Step 3: Make the template your own by customizing it to fit your content and branding. With Venngage’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can easily modify text, change colors and adjust the layout to create a unique and eye-catching design.

Step 4: Elevate your presentation by incorporating captivating visuals. You can upload your images or choose from Venngage’s vast library of high-quality photos, icons and illustrations. 

Step 5: Upgrade to a premium or business account to export your presentation in PDF and print it for in-person presentations or share it digitally for free!

By following these five simple steps, you’ll have a professionally designed and visually engaging presentation ready in no time. With Venngage’s user-friendly platform, your presentation is sure to make a lasting impression. So, let your creativity flow and get ready to shine in your next presentation!

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• Category: AI

Khan Academy and Microsoft partner to expand access to AI tools that personalize teaching and help make learning fun

• Sally Beatty

Tucked away in a high school chemistry classroom in Northern Indiana are pressure gauges intended to teach a fundamental principle of chemistry known as Boyle’s Law. 

In their place, Hobart High School chemistry teacher Melissa Higgason is using a variety of seemingly random items – including mini marshmallows, plastic water bottles, balloons and eyedroppers – to inspire her students to design their own experiments and see what happens to gas under different conditions. 

“There are simulations where students are changing a variable and watching a number climb up and go down,” said Higgason. “But gas laws are very abstract. It’s hard for kids to make all those connections without hands on experiences that are relevant to them.”  

While Higgason has decades of experience in education, she’s the first to admit the idea of using everyday items to teach physics came from an AI-powered teaching assistant called Khanmigo for Teachers , a pilot program introduced last year by Khan Academy, the non-profit online educational organization started in 2008 by Sal Khan with a mission to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere.   

Today at Microsoft Build, Microsoft and Khan Academy announced a new partnership that aims to bring these time-saving and lesson-enhancing AI tools to millions of educators . By donating access to Azure AI-optimized infrastructure, Microsoft is enabling Khan Academy to offer all K-12 educators in the U.S. free access to the pilot of Khanmigo for Teachers, which will now be powered by Azure OpenAI Service.   

The two companies will also collaborate to explore opportunities to improve AI tools for math tutoring in an affordable, scalable and adaptable way with a new version of Phi-3, a family of small language models (SLMs) developed by Microsoft.

With AI tools, teachers have more time to spend on students 

“I use Khanmigo to spice up my classroom to make it fun and engaging,” said Higgason. For example, in another class of Higgason’s, Khanmigo suggested explaining net ionic equations by asking students if they’ve ever been to a dance party, comparing ions to dancers who change partners.   

Besides offering creative lesson plans, Khanmigo provides an array of AI-powered suggestions and teacher tools that relieve teachers of many of the administrative burdens that contribute to teacher burnout. With a click of an onscreen dashboard, in just a few minutes and often less, teachers can generate custom lesson plans, suggest student groupings, or “level” up or down text passages for learners who are either struggling or need more of a challenge. Used together, Khan Academy estimates these tools can save teachers an average of five working hours each week. 

“Teachers are super overworked,” said Sal Khan, noting record numbers of teachers are leaving the profession. School districts in underserved areas have been especially hard hit, with teachers citing low pay and unmanageable workloads exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic as some of the top reasons they are giving up on teaching. Using AI for education isn’t just a powerful way to potentially help accelerate student learning, said Khan, it’s also a way “to make teaching more sustainable.” 

Bringing high-quality educational experiences to more learners 

While earning rave reviews from teachers like Higgason since it launched in March 2023, Khanmigo previously cost teachers $4 per month. The fees covered the cost of developing and testing the new technology and accessing the large language models (LLMs) that power Khanmigo. 

As part of the new partnership, Khan Academy’s teacher tools will now be powered by Azure OpenAI Service. Microsoft’s donation of Azure infrastructure will enable the nonprofit educational organization to scale those teacher tools more widely and offer them to all K-12 teachers in the U.S. at no cost.   

The companies will also explore how small language models (SLMs) such as Microsoft’s new Phi-3 family of models, which can perform well for simpler AI tasks and are more cost effective and easier to use than larger models, might help improve and scale AI tutoring tools. To that end, Khan Academy is collaborating with Microsoft to explore the development of new, open-source small language models based on Phi-3. The goal of the exploratory work is to enable state-of-the-art math tutoring capabilities in an affordable and scalable manner. 

Small language models offer many of the same capabilities found in large language models but are smaller and trained on smaller amounts of data. They are also designed to be more accessible and easier to use for organizations with limited resources.  

Under their new agreement, Khan Academy will also give Microsoft access to explanatory educational content such as math problem questions and step-by-step answers to develop AI-powered math tutoring capabilities using Phi-3. Khan Academy will also provide ongoing feedback and benchmarking data to evaluate performance. None of Khan Academy’s user data will be used to train the model.  

Khan is excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Microsoft to train small language models in math tutoring – an area where he sees great potential. 

Not only are small language models easier to customize than large language models for specific tasks, such as teaching math, English or chemistry – they are also more efficient. “If they can get comparable to the larger frontier models but at a dramatically lower cost, that dramatically increases the speed at which we can make this accessible to more people,” said Khan. 

In the future, Khan hopes small language models that operate locally on a device (as opposed to the cloud) will create opportunities to provide teacher tools and tutors for resource-constrained schools outside the U.S. that lack computing infrastructure.   

Finally, the two organizations will also work to integrate more Khan Academy content into Copilot and Teams for Education, a free version of Microsoft’s popular Teams app to enhance collaboration and learning customized to meet the needs of educators and students. The integration will make Khan Academy’s vast educational library available to even more learners, while providing high-quality content to users of Copilot and Teams for Education. 

Tutoring with AI and the Socratic method 

Back in Hobart, Indiana, students in Higgason’s class, who have access to a separate set of AI-powered Khanmigo learning tools through its Khan Academy Districts partner program, have embraced its conversational Socratic method of tutoring, characterized by cheerful, energetic questioning to encourage critical thinking by students

They’ve also welcomed the AI teaching assistant’s creative suggestions to enliven normally staid chemistry lessons that have saved Higgason so much time.  

“Using a marshmallow and an eye dropper in a lab – I didn’t think you could use that to show a gas law,” said Madisyn Sanders, a 16-year-old sophomore. “It was a really interesting experiment.”  

“Khanmigo learns the same way I do,” added Aleksandar Tatum, 16. “It’s almost taking the steps with you. It helps you build a connection to help you better understand subjects.”  

Using AI to cheat is a major concern of many parents and teachers, but cheating is difficult with Khanmigo, as it does not do the writing for students. Instead of providing answers, Khanmigo asks questions and provides support as a tutor would do. 

In English class, Tatum and his classmates were asked to read “Romeo and Juliet”and then write a story that changed some of the scenes. Tatum prompted Khanmigo to describe a scene he had trouble remembering. “It was a genuine question I had about Act 1 Scene 3,” he said. But Khanmigo would only respond, “I’m here to help you create a story,” and Tatum had to go back to the original text to refresh his memory.  

When Jzehbel Garcia, 17, asked Khanmigo to provide the formula for “molality,” another abstract chemistry concept, Khanmigo responded with a hint and then a question: “What two pieces of information do you think you need to calculate molality?”  

“What’s really nice from a teacher’s perspective is it does not give my students answers. It gives them questions,” said Higgason. “Science is about asking really good questions. That’s how we learn and grow and innovate.”  

Khan Academy also provides guardrails and safety mechanisms in Khanmigo. Messages at the top of the screen notify students that their chat history and activities are visible to parents and teachers. The system also automatically flags questions or comments from students that are considered problematic, so teachers can review and decide if follow-up with the student is needed.  

Using Khanmigo teacher tools to meet unique student needs 

Before Khanmigo was introduced to Hobart in 2023, “I was drowning,” said Stephanie Franco, a teaching specialist who supports over 40 students still learning English by collaborating with more than 70 teachers located in two different buildings on the school campus.  

She was skeptical about bringing AI into the classroom, concerned like many parents and educators that it would lead to cheating.  

But once she discovered Khanmigo’s translation tools, “it was a breakthrough,” said Franco. Before Khanmigo was available at Hobart, she would spend hours scouring her students’ assignments to change wording or vocabulary that could prove challenging.  

Now she simply copies and pastes those assignments into the Khanmigo teacher chat function and types “make this understandable to a 7th grader.” In seconds, she said, she has a new assignment tailored to the needs of her students: “So instead of my students not being able to be included in the same assignments as their classmates since they’re still learning English, I can now provide them with a similar assignment that is more tailored to their learning needs.”  

Besides offering support for multi-language learners, Franco also teaches English as a second language. Again, she taps Khanmigo to create lesson plans and prompts to engage her students in discussion. “I’ll say, ‘Help me find a story that would help my students with reading comprehension.’ Or I can tell Khanmigo about a famous story and it will make up questions to ask the kiddos,” she said. 

Asking questions is not something that comes naturally to most high schoolers. Writing, too, is a challenge for many students, who often don’t know where to begin. Ben Horjus, who teaches essay writing and composition at Hobart, said many high school students “struggle to pick a focus area, to recognize credible sources, and to synthesize information so they can develop a stance supported by research. In this vast sea of information, it’s hard for them to know how to navigate and not feel lost.”  

With these challenges in mind, Horjus uses several Khanmigo teacher tools, including the “learning objectives” feature, which gives him ideas for student assignments along with activities and discussion topics. He also likes using it to develop guides for instruction for individual students or groups of students.  And he’s looking forward to using the “leveler” function, which can be used to simplify complex text, to demystify the more challenging parts of “The Crucible,” which he plans to teach next fall.  

Coming full circle  

In many ways, Khan said, the advent of AI-powered teaching and learning is a throwback to the origins of education, when 1:1 tutoring was the norm. Alexander the Great, the Macedonian conqueror, was tutored by Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, who in turn was tutored by Plato, who was tutored by Socrates, who pioneered the Socratic method of asking questions to guide students to knowledge. 

“You could imagine that if young Alexander was having difficulty with some topic, that Aristotle would slow down or speed up, or make sure that this young man who’s going to be a future king or emperor is engaged in his learning,” said Khan. 

By partnering with Microsoft, Khan hopes to provide more support for teachers so they can bring personalized teaching and learning to more classrooms, enabling many more students to one day help solve the world’s toughest challenges. “We can use the same tools,” said Khan, “to treat every kid like a future emperor.” 

Related links:  

Learn more: Khanmigo for Teachers  

Read more: Enhancing the future of education with Khan Academy  

Read more: Khanmigo for Teachers is free to all U.S. teachers thanks to support from Microsoft  

Learn more: Microsoft Education  

Read more: Tiny but Mighty: The Phi-3 small language models with big potential   

Top image: Melissa Higgason, who teaches chemistry at Hobart High School in Hobart, Indiana, instructs her students on how to use marshmallows and water bottles to understand an abstract chemistry concept, an idea suggested by Khanmigo for Teachers, a pilot AI-powered teaching assistant. Photo by Scott Eklund for Microsoft.

How a bike program is building student confidence in Richmond schools

RICHMOND, Va. -- Learning to ride a bike is a rite of passage for kids, but not every child has someone who can teach them.

At McClenny Elementary School in Richmond, they’re making learning fun, healthy, and safe.

"You see them go through a transformation of confidence," Jesse Cashin, a volunteer with the non-profit Fit 4 Kids , said.

They’re partnering with Richmond Public Schools for a bike safety program.

PE coach Marques Ruffin said he's happy for the help.

“They're excited about bikes. When they get to come and do it, it's so cool to see them do that in their own element and be with their peers and enjoying the process from start to finish," Ruffin said.

The hope is that these kids take all the safety lessons they're learning back to the neighborhoods where they live.

"Sometimes in a matter of days or in the course of a week we see kids go from not being able to ride at all to using pedals confidently," Cashin said.

Building that confidence through bike safety is Building Better Minds.

Watch for Rob Cardwell's education feature stories on CBS 6 News and WTVR.com. If you know someone Rob should profile, email him at [email protected].

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At revered Black school, Biden leans into faith and tells grads he hears voices of dissent

ATLANTA – President Joe Biden on Sunday warned graduates at one of the country's most revered African American academic institutions of "extremist forces aligned against the meaning and message of Morehouse" College in a commencement address that sought to lay out the stakes of the 2024 election.

"Graduates, this is what we're up against," Biden said during a 27-minute speech that leaned heavily into themes of faith and democracy in an appeal to Black voters. "They peddle a fiction, a character about what being a man is about − tough talk, abusing power, bigotry. Their idea of being a man is toxic."

"But that's not you. It's not us," he said.

Biden's remarks to the 414 graduates at Morehouse , an all-male historically Black college in Atlanta, came as he is struggling to unite Black voters , particularly Black men, around his candidacy. Many Morehouse students and faculty criticized Biden's participation when it was announced because of his support for Israel's war in Gaza.

"In a democracy, we debate dissent about America's role in the world. I want to say this very clearly: I support peaceful, nonviolent protest," Biden said on Sunday in response to the complaints. "Your voices should be heard. I promise you, I hear them."

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

No major disruptions, but peaceful protests target Biden

Although there were no major disruptions during Biden's speech, a few students walked out when Biden received an honorary Morehouse degree. More than a dozen graduates and at least three faculty members wore keffiyehs, while one student entered the ceremony draped in a Palestinian flag.

As Biden delivered his address, at least one female faculty member stood in the opposite direction, her fist raised, in a sign of protest.

Biden, wearing a maroon gown at the outdoor ceremony, said his administration is "working around the clock for more than just one cease-fire," but also to "bring the region together." He reiterated his support for a two-state solution in which Israelis and Palestinians live in peace.

"This is one of the hardest, most complicated problems in the world. There's nothing easy about it," Biden said. "I know it angers and frustrates many of you, including my family, but most of all, I know it breaks your heart. It breaks mine as well."

Biden added that leadership is about "fighting through the most intractable problems" to "find a solution by doing what you believe is right, even when it's hard and lonely."

About a mile away, pro-Palestinian protesters held a rally organized under the banner of "Say No to Genocide Joe Speaking at Morehouse." Morehouse's valedictorian also raised Israel's war in Gaza during his remarks before Biden took the lectern.

"It is my stance as a Morehouse man – nay as a human being – to call for an immediate and the permanent cease-fire in the Gaza Strip," graduating senior DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher said, with Biden sitting just steps behind him. Biden applauded in response.

Biden touts record with Black voters

Polling shows Biden is vastly underperforming his 2020 performance among Black voters, a reliably Democratic constituency, as some drift to Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee.

A New York Times/Siena College poll of six battleground states, including Georgia, found Biden has support from 60% of Black voters and Trump, while Trump is backed by 20% of Black voters. Biden won Black voters in the 2020 election by a 87%-12% margin, according to exit polls.

Ahead of Biden's arrival, Anwar Karim, a sophomore studying film at Morehouse and a member of Atlanta University Center Students for Justice in Palestine, told USA TODAY he was disappointed in his school’s choice of commencement speaker. He also decried Morehouse’s decision to award Biden an honorary degree, which is typically awarded to the school’s commencement speaker after a faculty vote.

“Morehouse College is dedicated to producing men of consequence who lead lives of service and leadership, and I just have to beg the question, when it comes to Biden, what is an example of his leadership?” Karim said Friday.

Biden commits to showing 'democracy is still the way'

In his speech, Biden touted his presidency as one that has delivered to Black Americans, pointing to efforts to invest in Black families and communities, cut child poverty, expand work opportunities, reduce prescription drug prices and cut student loan debt. He called out the "poison of white supremacy" and "systemic racism."

He said he is committed to "show that democracy, democracy, democracy is still the way," even in the face of inequality for Black Americans.

"What is democracy if Black men are being killed in the street? What is democracy if the trail of broken promises still leave Black communities behind?" Biden said. "What is democracy if you have to be ten times better than anyone else to get a fair shot? Most of all, what does it mean, as you've heard before, to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn't love him back in equal measure?"

Biden railed against new voting restrictions in Georgia and the "constant attacks on Black election workers." He also said those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 "are called patriots by some," a clear reference to Trump.

“Not in my house," Biden said.

In the days leading up to his Morehouse visit, the White House focused on Black outreach. Biden met on Thursday with plaintiffs of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, on the 70th anniversary of the dismantling of the "separate but equal" precedent. On Friday, Biden met with leaders of the "Divine Nine" HBCU sororities and fraternities.

More: In a nod to history, Biden meets with Brown v. Board of Education families

In Atlanta on Saturday, Biden spoke to Morehouse alumni and others at a campaign event at Mary Mac's Tea Room. "The fact is, this election, lots at stake, lots at stake. It's not about me. It's about the alternative as well," Biden said. "My opponent's not a good loser, but he is a loser."

Introducing Biden, Morehouse President David Thomas said, "No administration in history, since the inception of historically Black colleges and universities, has invested more in our institutions than the Biden administration."

"And if you look at his policies, it is very clear that those investments are not charity," Thomas said.

Biden, 81, closed his remarks with a reference to his age, a liability that has hung over his reelection. When he started his political career, Biden said he was told he was "too young." Now he hears he's "too old."

"Whether you're young or old, I know what endures: The strength and wisdom of faith endures. And my challenge to you is to still keep the faith as long as you can," Biden said. "Together we're capable of building a democracy worthy of our dreams."