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One Hour PowerPoint: 10 Strategies for Improving Presentations

Authors:

David Jakes, Naperville, Illinois

Dean Shareski, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan

Introduction:

In my role as an Instructional Technology Coordinator, I still see large numbers of students and teachers using presentation media in poorly designed ways. This presentation, and the 10 steps listed on this page, provide a simple framework for improving presentations, and can be taught to high school age students in about 50 minutes. Moreover, this presentation is more about communicating visually than it is about any kind of presentation software.

THE GOAL: this presentation focuses on the content that teachers need to know to be able to teach kids the proper way to communicate visually. (at least from our perspective)

Begin Here: Towards a Framework for Visual Literacy Learning

Then: Listen to the presentation, featured on the Apple Learning Exchange

Resources:

PowerPoint del.icio.us resources (Jakes) | Presentation resources (Shareski)

Presentation del.icio.us resources (Jakes) | Presentation resources (Shareski)

Visual Literacy del.icio.us resources (Jakes)

Brain-based learning resources (Jakes)

Design Matters del.icio.us resources (Shareski)

Presentation Slide Deck:

| View | Upload your own

10 Strategies:

1. Teach them biology. Teach them specifically about the brain. Presentations should be based in an understanding of how people learn, and to do that, students have to understand some simple ideas about the brain. Set the stage for creating a different type of presentation for explaining the human processing center.

The brain is about 3.5 pounds and is composed of around 12 billion cells. There is some individual variation.
Two critical (at least for presentations) feed the brain. The eyes and the ears.
The ears are connected to the brain via the auditory nerve.
The eyes are connected to the brain via the optic nerve.
The optic nerve is constructed of about 1 million nerve fibers; the auditory nerve, about 30,000. There is a tremendous amount of bandwidth associated with the eye, suggesting that presentations should contain a visual component.

2. Teach them how to make it visual. Use images to communicate, not decorate... (source, Slide 9 and 10)

"You can observe a lot by just watching.” Yogi Berra (source)

Text is inefficient. We read five times as fast as a person can talk. (source)

So...the upshot...avoid text-based slides. Take advantage of the bandwidth the optic nerve provides and the 3.5 pound hard-drive that humans have and make the slide deck image-based.

"PowerPoint doesn't kill presentations....bullets do"

Humans have dual processing capability:

visual
auditory

An excellent presentation takes advantage of both and makes connections between them.

“Why would you use words on the screen when they do just fine in your mouth?” Seth Godin (source)

Research by Richard Mayer suggests that people learn best with a combination of imagery and text.

This does not mean a slide should be content contained in a bullet list with a piece of clip art stuck in the corner of the slide.

Effective slides contain a high-impact image, usually the size of the entire slide, with a limited, but well chosen amount of text. The majority of the content associated with the slide is spoken, with the image and the text on the screen in direct support of what the speaker is saying. Detailed information should not be presented on the screen, but in a printed document.

However, presenters need to consider cognitive load.

3. Teach them how to find the visuals.

Based on the first two strategies, it is imperative that students understand how to locate imagery that can be used in presentations. Of course, in my opinion that means Flickr, with its 2.67 billion images (that's right, billion with a b!!) providing a rich database of photographs useful for presentations.

I recommend using FlickrStorm as a search tool for locating images. FlickrStorm searches the "most interesting" area of Flickr and generally returns high-quality imagery. You can also download your search, and distribute the images via a URL-this works well for younger students where seeing inappropriate content is more of an issue than with older students.

FlickrStorm Tutorial

FlickrStorm Screencasts 1 | 2 | 3

An alternative to FlickrStorm is FlickrCC.

For professional presentations, both Dean and I recommend istockphoto.com. This is a pay site, but high-quality imagery can be purchased for one dollar (American) apiece. The advanced search even enables you to define the location of "blank space" in an image that can be used to place text into.

4. Teach them about intellectual property.

Students should have a clear understanding of Creative Commons licensing. Creative Commons licenses enable people who create content for online consumption to be able to tell others how they may use that content. From the Web site:

Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright.

There are a variety of licenses, for example:

Creative Commons Attribution: from the site:

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.

Search Creative Commons licensed material here.

FlickrStorm and Creative Commons: when you search Flickr in FlickrStorm you can search a particular Creative Commons license. Click "Advanced" under the search term to specify a license. Most users will select Photos you can use commercially Attribution.

Watch "Wanna Work Together" which provides an excellent overview of Creative Commons licensing. Watch it here or go to the Creative Commons site to watch it, as well as a video that describes how to use FireFox and Creative Commons together. More videos about additional topics are located on the site.