Practice Exercises

Watch the TED Talk “Mosquitos, malaria, and education” from Bill Gates. What makes the presentation engaging? Create a couple of slides that could have been used during the presentation.

Review the Section508.gov presentations training videos that provide tips for making presentations accessible to all audiences. Using a slide presentation that you have created or one that you find online, make some suggestions for improving the accessibility of the slides based on the information on the site.

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi was the 2014 World Champion of Public Speaking. Review Hettiarachchi’s full speech on YouTube. As you listen and view, identify three skills from the chapter that were used by the speaker. Explain how the skill was used, and comment on its effectiveness.

Create a “Background” slide for yourself that includes information such as your hometown, your college, and a couple of fun facts about yourself. Include a picture that is meaningful to you. Choose a theme for the slide, and use the Designer tool to select an engaging design. Crop the image you include into the shape of a star, and adjust the transparency of the image.

Design a custom color template for a presentation to highlight your company’s annual picnic. Include an appropriate picture and remove the background of the image. Explain the use of your color choices in a text box on the slide.

Design a slide to share three “lessons learned,” or takeaways, from this chapter using a SmartArt design of your choice. Find an image that relates to the topic, and make it the slide background, and apply 75 percent transparency.

Using the Rehearse with Coach tool, rehearse the My Life in a Snapshot presentation that you have created over the last two chapters. What information did you get from the tool? Was it helpful?

Imagine that you are preparing for a presentation at either your work or school. Choose a space to explore for presentation readiness and actually go visit it. Prepare a slide to describe the chosen location, the readiness of the space, the features that support your presentation, and steps to take to ensure optimal preparedness.

Design a few slides to teach your audience how to complete a simple task of your choice. Find a video that supports it and embed it within the slide. Include a transition to appear after the video ends to pop up a summarized statement.

Add another transition to your My Life in a Snapshot Slides presentation. Which transition did you choose and why? Make sure to apply the transition to at least three slides and adjust the speed if desired.

Add comments to two slides in your My Life in a Snapshot Slides presentation. Verbally add speaker notes to help you during the presentation. Last, run spell check on the presentation. Did you find any errors?

Add sound to your My Life in a Snapshot Slides presentation. First, make or find an audio recording in MP3 or WAV format. Save the file to your computer and remember where you saved it. Play the recording within your presentation by clicking on the audio icon. Did the sound enhance the presentation? Did you modify it to make it better?