Power Point is a presentation program by Microsoft.

It is part of the Microsoft office product that provides users with an interface to design multimedia slides to be displayed on a projection system or personal computer. The software incorporates images, sound, video, text, charts, and graphs to create interactive presentation. PowerPoint is a great tool in designing, delivering, and developing presentations. It is a powerful software that can enhance the effectively of visual communication to be able to communicate critical material. For students, who employ effective PowerPoint skills seem to be more organized. Combining visual design and message will help bring together points of interest between the student and the audience. Acquiring PowerPoint skills does not mean that a student needs to master the software. In fact, technical knowledge is not even half of what PowerPoint skills mean. What is most important is, a student is able to identify critical PowerPoint tools and combine these elements together to present a convincing message. Like an effective communicator, the score of a student personal PowerPoint skills lies if the message is clear. In this case, presentation design is only a part of the message. A student with great PowerPoint skills uses different presentation designs to his/her advantage and drives his/her point even to the most hostile audience. The different components of PowerPoint skills consist of many levels and set of design guidelines. These guidelines depend on readability, visual clarity, and consistency. In essence, a student with great PowerPoint skills knows the eye of the audience and makes sure that every slide is clear and consistent. There are different design standards depending on the size of the audience, the size of the room or the color of the walls. The following are the importance of Power Point skills to management students in Tanzania context. It helps management student to be aware that much can be done out of the simple text and graphic outlines. There are different text transition standards which are more effective than other transitions. At the same time, there are image layouts that can send the message clearer. PowerPoint skills include answering how, when, and where to use images, charts, graphs, and special texts. For the management student, he/she would answer why such presentation is needed. Example, why we should not use graphs or other visual aids that is hard to interpret. Not all graphs and photographs are PowerPoint friendly. Acquiring skills in the art of preparing Power Point presentations can give a student an edge in the classroom. Even if a student have some knowledge about this software, still he/she will gain valuable knowledge learning about the updated features of this software e.g. the animation and multimedia features. By enrolling in the Power Point training programs, students can maximize the use of this software and enhance their skills to create exceptional presentation slides that will achieve their desired goal.

Innovation Students can be innovative and creative as they want to be with Power Point skills. The PowerPoint application has enough scope for incorporating a variety of designs and graphics along with sounds, animations and videos from a wide variety of sources and formats. Students love visuals and designs because it helps them put an image to an idea. If they are standing in front of an audience describing their innovative thoughts, showing a picture or photo with the highlighted points helps get their point across and listeners are likely to sit up and take notice. Time saving: Students with Power Point skills can get going with a small or large presentation in a matter of minutes. Beginners can quickly learn the basics and the program is deep enough to accommodate advanced users as well. It helps to familiarize students with the variety/different tools that can help management student to deliver great presentations. These include efficient and timely use of audio and video to enhance the presentation. Students can use different hypertext, graphic transition, and action buttons to make the audience look at a standard presentation from another perspective. The essence of PowerPoint skills is to empower students to let their audience see what they want them to see. Flexibility PowerPoint skills allow management student print their projects or presentations, or convert them into WebPages, scan, emailed, etc Effective Power Point skills is not all about being sure of the buttons to press; it extends to good knowledge of how to choose the right amount of information to display, selecting a color scheme and other additional multimedia features such as visuals, graphs and how to give good speech or presentations without Power Point. Proper Communication and great presentations: Graphics and other media can be applied in PowerPoint to smoothly convey whatever information or point students need it to. Management students need to master PowerPoint skills. As they will need to use it quite often during appraisals, hiring process, induction of new recruits, policy change announcements also they will use Power Point presentations to communicate information across the board and to employees during employee meetings to tell them about how far the organization is. Advantages of power point skills to management students in Tanzania In the right context and used correctly, PowerPoint skills can be an effective and powerful communication tool. The main strength is that it can visually represent concepts in an orderly fashion. Management students can use it to present material, then have a slide that has discussion questions and break the class into groups. Also, visuals, graphs, texts, when possible such as clip art, pictures, videos, etc can be used for more elaborations and illustrations. Help to direct the student's attention good and interpretable images, pictures and videos are integral part of presentation to display students creativity and invite attentions. For students who either have a learning challenge, a physical challenge or where English in not their first
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language, can spend less time struggling to write notes and more time listening and participating. Many management students prefer Power Point presentation because there is always an excitement about what the slides will reveal. The content can be presented in the form of bullet points, which is a cue for the presenter. Even the audience wants to read small simple lines, rather than paragraphs. This keeps the listeners engaged in the whole act. Help to boost the confidence of student Power Point skills is a useful tool for showing the audience things/materials that enhance or emphasize what the speaker is saying. It is useful in illustrating the content of speech such as quotations or major ideas, photos, graphs, charts etc. If students are not great orator they can educate themselves on the topic simultaneously and rehearse Power Point presentation. Ease of creation Students with Power Point skills can create Power point presentations easily; one does not need to be a designing expert to prepare an amusing presentation. The tools provided within the PowerPoint application are very user friendly and easy to follow step-bystep; even the un experienced user can sit down and effectively learn how to navigate this program with the helpful templates and tips offered within the program. The application provides students with a variety of layouts to choose from and it's easy to select what kinds of features students want to integrate into their slides which help them to create an expert looking slideshow. Adding some pictures and graphical representations helps to personalize ones presentation. Helps students to be aware of what to avoid when preparing a Power Point presentation things like, the use slides that is unattractive or visually unappealing, the use of graphs or other visual aids that are hard to interpret, the use of incomplete sentences in your PowerPoint slides, too much or few slides or text, the use of Power Point as a dodge so that one has to speak lesser or not at all. Helps students to become good public speakers Power Point skills are excellent when it leads to detailed conversations and transfer of learning. Student should rehearse Power Point presentation as well as learning how to give good/great presentation without Power Point. Encouraging critical thinking, classroom discussion and student participation are some of the key ingredients of PowerPoint skills. Learning does not occur by osmosis; memory is the residue of thinking. Preparing PowerPoint slides may be a useful exercise for students because it forces them to think about, organize, and prioritize the material to be covered in a particular lesson or presentations. It helps students to reach out to the different learning styles in the audience. Not everyone can retain information from hearing a lecture or presentation. However, if students use Power Point skills to illustrate lectures or presentations, it can help to cement the concepts to the audience. It's important for management students to learn how to balance time and display presentations in an efficient manner so that each audience receives what they would like to hear. After the presentation, it is very important to make a copy of the lecture notes available with
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small pictures of the slides next to the text. This approach makes use of multiple learning styles and enables participants to access the content again and again whenever and wherever they like. Generally, not only Power Point skills help students to make great presentations, easier understandability of the subject, attractive portray of important points, makes learning a lot more fun and entertaining, but also there are cons of Power Point skills such as, it inhibits interaction, squashes student creativity and inquisitiveness, students can often forget to emphasize the most important points, it interferes with audience responsiveness and critical thinking. The screen can actually be a distraction from what is being discussed example, the use of graphs or other visual aids that are hard to interpret. The danger is that the audience may become bored and may not well understand the presentation.

REFERENCES www.student success skills.com/ppt/sss%20web%20page%20pp.ppt. www.slideshare.net/sellersb/referenne material-power point-1696547 July 8, 2009 www.authorsstream.com/presentation/book/zink-8389-reference-book-July 9, 2007 www.power point.com www.presentation skills biz/t/power point-skills UK