This resource will help you understand some basic features and useful tools to create and edit your own digital presentations.
Creating digital presentations
"Death by Powerpoint", a term often used to describe mind-numbing presentations that do anything BUT engage the audience, is obviously something you want to avoid.
Presentation skills expert David JP Phillips provides the following six tips for creating engaging presentations.
- Deliver one message per slide
- Avoid text sentences
- Make the most important element of the slide the biggest in size
- Use contrast to steer focus
- Use a maximum of six objects on a slide
- Use a dark background
Common digital presentation tools
| Tool | Features/limitations | Tutorial | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Slides |
Google Slides is a free, cloud-based presentation tool that is a part of the Google Drive suite. It requires a Google Account to use. Slides offers a small range of templates. You can easily edit text as well as insert images, diagrams, videos, and shapes. You can export your files into a range of file formats, including PowerPoint (.pptx). |
Get started with Slides | Free |
| Haiku Deck | Haiku Deck offers a large range of visual templates and access to royalty-free images. | Free/paid | |
| Keynote | Keynote is the standard presentation software included on Mac computers. Integrating with Microsoft PowerPoint, Keynote has a range of themes and animations to help you make engaging and eye-catching presentations. | Included on macOS | |
| LibreOffice Impress | Impress, part of the LibreOffice suite, is free and open source desktop presentation software. Impress has a relatively small number of templates and limited collaborative functionality. |
Free Open source |
|
| Microsoft PowerPoint |
Microsoft PowerPoint is the standard presentation tool for most workplaces and offers a large range of templates. With a Microsoft Account and OneDrive, you can save and share presentations easily. Note: OneDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage solution, allows you to work backup your documents and work collaboratively with others. |
Free for UOW students and staff | |
| Prezi | Prezi is a web-based presentation tool that offers a tiered membership model. Prezi allows for non-linear navigation, zooming in or out for visual effect. Note: Prezi Classic has been mostly superseded by Prezi Next - be aware of this when looking for online tutorials or when reactivating an old Prezi account. |
Free/paid |
This resource was adapted and remixed from "Digital Essentials" by UQ Library Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This adapted work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.