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Business and Personal Finance
Final 2023

You are required by me to arrive for the Final at the appointed starting time for your section. You are required by me to stay until the appointed ending time for your section. Requests for any variation in this exam schedule must be approved by Principal Kelly Cavanaugh, Vice Principal Principal T.J. Flanagan, or Vice Principal Daniel Mastrogiacomo.


You are to create and present a slide presentation with at least 12 slides as described in the Final Project assignment previously posted in Google Classroom, including the following:

  • Your slide show will feature a top ten list, the ten most important things the class should know about your topic.
  • You will use Google Slides to create your presentation.
  • You are to choose a topic in Business and Personal Finance that we have not covered this year.
  • Each student will be required to choose a different topic.
  • The topic must be approved in advance by Mr. O'Connell.

Requirements (subject to change):

  • Before you begin working on your presentation, read the short article below entitled What is the 7x7 rule for PowerPoint?
  • There is a time limit of two minutes for your presentation. Make your slides as concise as possible while still covering the topic accurately. Time yourself in advance of the Final so you don't risk running overtime. You may be asked to sit down if you run past your allotted time.
  • The first slide should contain:
    • title
    • your first and last name
    • name of the course
  • The last slide will be your works cited page, and a message thanking your audience i.e. Thank you for listening.
  • Use a consistent slide theme throughout.
  • Make sure that your information is internally consistent and accurate. For example, if one slide states the average starting salary for a given occupation is $40,000, it's a problem if another slide states that the average salary is generally $43,492.
  • Make the presentation as interesting as possible.
  • Use MLA citation format for all resources, including web sites that you used to gather information and images.
    • Use in context citations as well as a works cited page.
    • Any direct quotes must appear in quotation marks.
    • Use your own words for most of the presentation. Do not submit a "copy and paste" presentation.
  • You may insert pictures from the Internet.
  • After completion, the presentation will be presented to the class.
    • Make sure that it is easy for the viewer to read each and every word. Make sure you have about the same amount of text on every slide, and that no slide is either too long or too short.

 

What is the 7x7 rule for PowerPoint?

by Robert Frost,
who teaches NASA instructors how to use PowerPoint effectively

The 7x7 Rule states that a PowerPoint slide (or any other electronic slide) should have no more than seven lines of text and no more than seven words in each of those lines.

Personally, I think that the 7x7 should be treated as a clear flag for a problematic slide and not an acceptable norm.  Slides with that many lines of text are generally not good slides.  They defeat the purpose of a slide, which is to visually convey the idea the presenter is talking about.

My recommendation is that a slide should depict one idea.  If it has multiple ideas it should be because the intent of the slide is explicitly to compare or contrast those ideas.

If multiple ideas need to be put on one slide, they should not appear at once, but should appear when they are needed.  It is a bad practice to put up information before the presenter is ready to talk about it because the audience doesn't wait.

There is a concept called the billboard rule.  The billboard rule says that it should take no more than three seconds to read the text on a billboard (for obvious reasons).  Nancy Duarte, an expert in presentations, recommends applying the billboard rule to presentation slides.  There are obviously exceptions, such as when you want the audience to read an extended quote.

The reason it is recommended is that people read about 5 words a second.  If you have 49 words (via the 7x7), the focus of the audience will be lost for at least 10 seconds as they read the text and stop listening to the speaker.

 

Source: Quora