By Betsy Weber, Chief Evangelist, TechSmith Corporation

There is probably no way to get around the shock of hearing your voice the way that others hear it, but there are ways to rehearse your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations that will help you to correct the other problems:

• Rehearse out loud  

  Always speak aloud when you practice your presentation, and speak at the volume that you will use when you are presenting. Speaking out loud is the only way to identify awkward words or phrases that can leave you tongue-tied. And if you do not use your full voice until you are actually presenting, the sound and feel of it may be disconcertingly unfamiliar.

• Rehearse in the room where you will present  

  Practicing your presentation where you will deliver it familiarizes you with the room and helps you get a feel for the presentation as it will really occur. If the actual room isn't available, practice in the most similar room available.

• Rehearse with your slides  

  One skill a successful presenter needs is the ability to coordinate their spoken words with their PowerPoint presentation. Practicing with both elements together will help build familiarity and expertise. Make corrections to your slides whenever and wherever a problem occurs. And remember: No audience enjoys a presentation where the spoken text is just a word-for-word reading of the text on the slides.

• Rehearse the timing  

  It is important for presenters never to exceed their allotted time, and always to leave a few minutes for questions at the end. It is therefore a good idea to practice the timing of both audio and video elements, and PowerPoint makes this very easy by providing the Rehearse Timings command on the Slide Show menu. As you perform your presentation, clicking the mouse to advance from slide to slide, PowerPoint keeps track of how much time is spent — both on each slide individually, and on the presentation as a whole.

• Rehearse with a colleague  

  Novice speakers often find that rehearsing in front of a colleague helps them to identify problems that they weren't previously aware of. Even a colleague who is not an expert on the material being presented can call the presenter's attention to fidgeting, awkward terminology or phrasing, and speech that is too fast or too slow, too loud or too soft.

  If it is possible to have the PowerPoint slides projected during the rehearsal, the colleague can also provide feedback about key elements such as transitions, graphics, font types and sizes, and video elements. What a presenter intends as an interesting transition or animation can sometimes turn out to be mostly a distraction, and an observer may be able to pick up on this right away.

• Rehearse in front of a mirror  

  Watching yourself rehearse in a mirror is especially useful for fine-tuning: you see the results immediately and in real time, not after the fact. You can stop as often as you like; and you can repeat any sequence, however short or long, as many times as needed.

• Record your rehearsal  

  The most complete way to preview your own presentation is to record it. Of course, you can make an audio-only recording, but that will only tell you how you sound, and not how you (or your slides) will look. A video recording of your complete presentation, taken from about the middle of the classroom or auditorium, will give you a fairly clear image of what your audience will see and hear.

  Another way to record your rehearsal is by using screen recording software, which is most commonly used to capture and package presentations for onscreen audiences. One such third-party product available for purchase is Camtasia Studio 3.0 from TechSmith Corporation. Camtasia Studio includes picture-in-picture recording, making it possible to show both the presenter and the PowerPoint slides onscreen simultaneously. To learn more about Camtasia Studio, or to purchase the product, visit Office Marketplace.

With careful preparation, well-thought-out and engaging content, and sufficient rehearsal, a great PowerPoint presentation is definitely within your reach.

About the author

Betsy Weber is Chief Evangelist at Okemos-based TechSmith Corporation, and collaborates with customers, industry experts, and technologists all over the world. With nearly a decade of experience in corporate training and product management, she has worked on both the development and the customer service sides of business application delivery.