bad powerpoints - guidelines to making a not-so-annoying powerpoint

The articles that we were assigned to read all cut to the chase on bad powerpoints. Each article was informing and definitely helpful. In high school, I always got annoyed by the powerpoints, presented by fellow classmates, that had those loud squeaky sound effects and animations that made my head spin. I think every student, beginning from middle school, should take a look at those articles. They are the guidelines for making and presenting powerpoints. One thing about presenting powerpoints that I think is extremely important is that presenters should NOT read from the slides directly. They should either post pictures on the slide and talk about the images or write a few bullet points rather than an essay. This makes the presentation much more interesting and keeps the audience awake.
The following are guidelines students, or general powerpoint presenters, should follow to avoid making a disasterous powerpoint:
1. No loud, annoying sound effects. The effects included in Powerpoint are not as quite pleasing to the ear. Instead, if at all possible, take clips of music from your own music library.
2. The colors should balance each other--no clashing colors like hot pink text on a bright neon green background [it truly hurts my eyes!]. Also, each background slide color in the entire presentation should be the same. Don't make the first slide a yellow color background, the 2nd purple, the 3rd a green, and so on.
3. No clip art. Sure, clip art may be cute and funny sometimes...but we're in college [or work environment aka real life] now. I know when I was in middle school my fellow group members and I chose random clip art for our projects. That was then. Now, JPEG images should be used in powerpoints. Use your own photos or find images through Google Images--but make sure to cite them.
4. Use bullet points instead of whole paragraphs. This makes your presentation run much more smoothly. And, it will keep your audience interested and not doze off. Even better than bullet points is a short phrase that summarizes what you are going to discuss.
5. Keep transitions and animations at a minimum. They can get pretty annoying sometimes, especially if they are the kinds that spin all throughout the page and if there is an overflow of them. I think the fade transition is the least annoying out of all the others.
Follow these guidelines and your powerpoint presentation should go well.