| 1. Make sure your font is large enough to be
read comfortably by all in the classroom. When you are practicing your
speech, try sitting in the back of the room to see how your slides
look.
2. Check your color choices. Sometimes colors that look really nice on a computer screen really don't look good when projected with an LCD projector. 3. Avoid distracting sound effects. Better yet, avoid all sound effects. 4. Be careful with your use of special effects ie. Letters flying in from above, or words forming very slowly. If you must use these (and know that the judges prefer that you don't) make sure you have practiced your speech enough so that you aren't standing staring at the screen in silence waiting for your letters to form on the slide. 5. Do not read your slides verbatim. This is a speech. The slides are just the key points you want to emphasize. Make sure there is a reason why you are there! 6. Practice your speech repeatedly before you give it. 7. If you did a statistical analysis, make sure you are able to explain the significance of the results you got from the analysis. 8. Make sure you have timed your speech at least once. If you are running short on time know that judges are most interested in hearing about what you did as opposed to the background research that you did. |