I saw him speak at the University of Texas a couple of months ago, and his slide presentation style was eye-opening. Not only did he zip through the slides while talking at a pace unlike any I had seen used before, but the design and style of his slides was attention-drawing.

I think we do have a long way to go with students in terms of addressing the design and style of their presentations, but talking about it with them is a start, and modeling effective uses is another start.

I for one don’t want to see any more bright blue backgrounds!

I love the sticky note example above. I’ve been looking for design ideas at the Design School at Stanford’s website. Some interesting ideas floating around there that inspire me.

PowerPoint isn’t an ideal teacher but it’s an amazing aide. Any time a picture or illustration would enable understanding, any time it would be useful to show a problem at the board, PowerPoint is there for me. Oftentimes I’ll go off script and draw something at the board or make a list of questions, but for the vast majority of the times that my instruction goes according to script, PowerPoint wrestles extraordinary blocks of times away from tedious activities (sketching at the board, writing up assignments) and hands it over to the fun stuff.

I realize you don’t dig the idea of a “script.”

My personal pendulum has wobbled from hardcore constructivism to direction instruction and then back to the middle somewhere. This idea that a lesson should be an amorphous entity we all — students and teacher — shape equally is a poor way to go.

Constructivists ventriloquize direct instructionists in arrogant, totalitarian tones, quoting them like you do: “sit passively and absorb all my knowledge,” or (like in your post) “I know everything about this stuff. You know nothing.”  I’m not coming from arrogance. I don’t revel in my authority but I know lots more math than my students.

I mean, I realize you’re trying to make a point, but playing to the extremes like that leaks credibility.

The answer is somewhere in the middle, naturally. There will always be occasions to learn from expertise. Under those circumstances, PowerPoint will be there, ready to serve instruction not constrain it. Those circumstances demand a discussion of good PowerPoint versus the lousy. That’s what this blog has been about lately.

http://mikecurtin.edublogs.org/2007/03/15/what-powerpoint-should-be/

I’ve got a lot of the same ideas regarding presentations and the fact that teachers often kill student interest right off the bat with the design of their presentations and handouts. Trying to explain how to design things is hard and designing things well takes time. For me, part of it involves always looking at things through the eyes of designer. There’s a great SXSW presentation on that at http://2007.sxsw.com/video/movie_window.2007.php?dir=2007_trailers&id=1029
(you can get the whole thing via iTunes)

I’ve been trying to write a post on this for a while but it’s been a struggle. You’ve given me the inspiration to try harder.

Thanks,

Tom

Teaching students how to give a good presentation is a whole other ballgame. I’ve had some success by trying to limit them to a small amount of bullets per slide and a small amount of words per bullet. It’s a blanket guideline that doesn’t always work, but it’s a start. Sometimes it’s a challenge just to get a middle school student to buy in to the fact that you don’t really need to accompany each bullet with a laser gun sound. I’ll be working on some powerpoints in a few classes in the upcoming weeks…I’ll try to pass on some of your design ideas.
Thanks!

It is great to bring these issues into the forefront. I don’t think this kind of a topic gets much air time because most people are not educated to have a conversation about visual elements.

I think it would help if that type of vocabulary was introduced to make the transition from thinking about creating PPT in a more interesting way to actually constructing PPT in a more interesting way.

People have the background about reading along with someone reciting what is on the slide doesn’t make a great PPT presentation – great stuff!

But now how do they do it, apart from the step by step guide… Where else can a person go with this idea?
What is it important about composition?
Why are your math worksheets so powerful visually?
What is it about the simplicity of design that will attract a student to the subject matter on the page?
Why do your slides with the bullet ants work SO much better than the other ones?

People have seen this on your site, but the language to take this problem of design apart is not there… minimalism?! What does it mean? Why is it so important?

I don’t know if it has to be or if this is the place for it, I grapple with this visual to verbal problem all the time as an art/digital art teacher… how do you explain visual ideas, moreover how do you teach another person the language they need to express their personal visual ideas?