How do you keep a class of students interested and focused? Teaching skills and an entertaining lesson. But an engaging style of presentation shouldn't be discounted; although it may not be the heart of successful teaching, it certainly helps, and anything that can enhance the appearance of your lesson without creating much more work for the teacher should be welcomed. Fortunately, Microsoft PowerPoint fits the bill on both counts.

Jeremy teaches chemistry at a large, inner city secondary school. His weekly timetable includes a range of classes with widely differing age groups and abilities, and he always needs a number of different lessons, each tailored to the students before him. The job is a demanding one, but as he uses PowerPoint to prepare and present his subject, his workload is eased both in the ease of putting together an attractive lesson, and in being able to mould his teaching to his different classes.

Visual appeal

For Jeremy, the crux of PowerPoint's appeal is the engaging and stylish presentations that it helps him to create. He understands the importance of keeping the class's attention, and of ensuring that they feel involved in the lesson; he doesn't want to be seen as merely talking at the class, but talking with them, encouraging more responsiveness from the students. PowerPoint offers him far more in this respect than traditional textbooks ever could.

PowerPoint also makes this easy for him. Jeremy doesn't need to do any complex designing or programming in order to produce the attractive results he desires; instead, the software can automatically transform simple text into appealing diagrams. SmartArt technology means that, for example, a simple bulleted list in text can be both given an attractive and easy-to-read graphical appearance, and animated, allowing Jeremy to reveal points one at a time rather than en masse. Similarly, a process - a step-by-step breakdown of a chain reaction, perhaps - can be illustrated clearly and with Jeremy introducing each stage as it happens.

Use again and again

However, Jeremy needs PowerPoint for many different lessons. Fortunately, the software helps him out here, too. For example, Jeremy teaches two Year 10 classes - both have been streamed by ability, and so he needs to teach the same subject in a different way for each, with differing levels of detail. However, the principles remain the same, so if any individual slide is equally suited to both classes, he can copy it across with a simple click. Similarly, if he wants to reuse a lesson from last year, but needs to include some newly-discovered details, he only needs to create one new slide rather than change the entire lesson. The new slide can then simply be dropped into the presentation at a suitable point.

Jeremy's students can also make use of his lessons after they are taught. Whether to revise or catch up on a missed class, PowerPoint makes it easy for the teacher to share individual slides or entire presentations - and they can be shared as PDF files, ensuring that anyone can view the slides without requiring specialist software. PowerPoint can store each slide in Slide Libraries, from where Jeremy can pick out whatever he or his students need quickly and easily.

PowerPoint can't guarantee top marks for Jeremy's students, but it can make his life that little bit easier, giving him more time (and less stress) to focus on helping those who need a little extra assistance - and more time for marking, of course. With a short training course to bolster his skills, Jeremy - or any teacher - can feel confident that, with PowerPoint, they can always have lessons that keep the class engaged, and allow their own teaching skills to fulfil their potential.