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Long before graduation time rolls around, you should be considering what to include in your graduation presentation. The biggest contribution to a graduation presentation is photographs.

1) Photo Wish List

  • baby or early year photos from the students
  • current photos of students
  • photos taken through the school year of individual students and student groups
  • if students have been at the school for many years, a "through the years" retrospective is always fun
  • class trips or school activity photos
  • photos of teachers

2) Make the Best Use of Your Photos - Optimize, Optimize, Optimize

Optimizing is a term used to indicate a change to a photo to reduce it in both visual size and file size, for use in other programs. Graduation presentations made with programs such as PowerPoint are often filled with photos. These types of presentations can often monopolize the resources of the computer due to the size and number of graphics used. As a result, the program can become sluggish and even crash if the photos are left too large before inserting them into the presentation. You need to optimize these photos before you insert them into your presentation.

3) Organize All the Files for the Presentation

Before you even start creating your graduation presentation, make sure you have stored all the photos, music and sound files in one folder on your computer. That way everything is easy to find (for you and the computer) for later use. This is also helpful if you wish to transport this presentation to another computer. All the components will be located in the same folder.

4) Compress Photos in PowerPoint to Reduce File Size

OK -- just in case you have already added a bunch of photos already, and knew nothing about optimizing them first, there is still hope that your presentation file will not grow to the size of a small planet. PowerPoint 2003 has a feature to compress one or all of the photos at one time. It couldn't be easier. Optimizing is still the better way to go, but use this as a Plan B.

5) Enhance Your Presentation With a Colorful Background

Color always catches everyone's eye. Choose a simple colored background or apply a design template to your graduation presentation.

6) Add Movements to Your Slides to Keep the Audience Focused

In most presentations, it is wise to limit the number of animations in your slides or movie, in order to keep the audience focused on your topic. Graduation presentations are one of the few times that all eyes will be on the presentation due to the number of photos used. Lots of motion makes it fun and enjoyable all around.

Add motion as slides change by applying slide transitions. Pictures and text can also have interesting movements applied by using custom animations.

7) Music is a Must

What would a graduation presentation be without some relevant music in the background? Music can start and stop on specific slides for effect, or one song can play throughout the whole presentation.

About.com's Top 40 Guide, Bill Lamb, has created a list of his picks for the Top 10 Graduation Songs for 2007.

8) Add Rolling Credits to PowerPoint Presentations

Lots of people probably were involved in making this wonderful graduation presentation. Every feature presentation has a list of rolling credits at the end. Why not this one? It's easy and could be a fun way to thank all those involved in making it special.

9) Automate the Graduation Presentation

You will want to sit back and enjoy the graduation presentation with the rest of the audience. Set timings on the slides and the animations, so that they advance all on their own.

10) How Was the Rehearsal?

Sure, you set timings on the slides and animations, but did you actually rehearse the show? It's a simple matter of watching the presentation and clicking the mouse when you want the next animation to happen. PowerPoint records these changes. Rehearsing the graduation presentation allows you to put just the right timing onto each animation so that it all runs smoothly -- not too fast -- not too slowly.

Now it is Show Time! Sit back and relax with the rest of the audience and enjoy all your hard work.

Download this outline as a PDF file.

More on Graduation Presentations
Graduation Presentations Using Windows Movie Maker
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