Senior Project Presentation – Tips for Students
Your Senior Project presentation should be designed as a connection between you, your Senior Project and your audience. Your presentation should go between 10-15 minutes. With that being said, you ideally want to have something “visual” for the audience/evaluation panel to be looking at while you speak.
There are many presentation applications: PowerPoint and Prezi (www.prezi.com) are most commonly used. But don’t hesitate to incorporate other tools, such as Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere, or other application. However, you HAVE TO MAKE SURE that this software is on or accessible from every PC in a computer lab.
Let’s use PowerPoint as an example of what you will need to do.
- Slide 1: Introduce yourself, your shop, and your Senior Project title.
- Slide 2: Offer a brief description or outline of your project—what you set out to do, or build or create.
- Slide 3: Briefly outline your process (the steps you took—think of product planning sheet.
- Slide 4: Briefly outline your expenses and time involved to completion (be HONEST – DON’T SAY I SPENT 80 hours, when you don’t have a journal reflecting the time).
- Slide 5: What were your challenges.
- Slide 6: What went well?—What did you learn?
- Slide 7: What advice would you offer to this year’s 10th and 11th graders as they approach their Senior Projects? What would you have done differently?
- Slide 8: Thank You slide—thank your mentors, shop teacher(s), and anyone who played a role in HELPING you in your Senior Project—always show gratitudeJ
Here are a few suggestions…
- Don’t add gimmicky things—like sound transitions.
- Don’t add goofy characters, etc. – be professional.
- Make font readable on the background you choose – Stick with standard fonts, sizes and colors.
- Add relevant pictures, graphs, and/or tables but don’t overwhelm the reader – consider handouts if information is important for evaluators to have.
- Keep your words on your slides BRIEF – YOU offer the details verbally that compliment your slides. Your slides are basically an outline of what you will share.
- If you use a mouse click to advance a slide – PRACTICE your timings with another person – and have them do the mouse for you.