About PPTs and oral presentations

Hi! 
It seems general opinion is "PRO" PPTs and other visual in-class aids(mostly for lecturing, anyway). 
Thank you, Celeste, Natalya and Donna, for your on-the-go comments. Get some fun and not boring to skim it all at all:))

Learnt something new about PPT: possibility of making PPT games for in-class use and slides hyperlinking. 

Good advice on Jeopardy screencast at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgPO-agnnMk. Thanks for sharing!

By the way, a screencast video could be a lecture visual aid (vidcast) or add-on to your oral PPT presentation and a starting point for further in-class activity. Or can even replace PPT...
I would recommend Jing.com for the likes of screencaptures and screencast. 

As for lecturer or student-presenter: 
we actively use here PPTs as teachers'lecture support and for students public conferencing practice in English. 
But first of all, we should teach students 
the basics of public speaking in any language(both native or foreign);
skills of on-stage presenting and body language-i.e.voice, tone, intonation, gestures and other;
selecting proper topics; 
organizing and structuring the speech;
studying useful expressions and even sentences;
writing and studying by heart their speeches;
and only then adding a slide show as support,
logically designing and even counting number of slides... 

Slides and speech should match and switch. 
The great deal- using good samples,preparation and rehearsal. 

Sorry for exposing here some well known and very common things, applying both for lecturers and students.Trying to fight a bad habit of 'reading lectures' or mumbling written presentation. Just to think about it.

Sorry for too long piece of writing

Kind
Irina