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Tag: engaging presentations

Published on Leave a comment on Using Slides

by Bart Everson

I just got back from Meaningful Living and Learning in a Digital World, and I'll be sharing a number of ideas from that conference over the course of the summer.

Always on the lookout for alternatives to Microsoft (shudder) PowerPoint, I was quite intrigued to see the keynote presenter (Tonya V. Thomas) using Slides.

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If you haven't heard of it, Slides is a web tool for creating and sharing presentations. Because it uses HTML 5, all you need is a web browser. There's nothing to download or install. It doesn't use Flash. Everything is stored in the cloud, so as long as you have internet access, you'll have access to all your presentations.

Other features of note:

  • Works well with tablets and phones
  • Can be embedded in web pages
  • Exports to PDF
  • Supports mathTeX (for displaying complex equations)

Most interesting to me, you can add slides in both horizontal and vertical directions. Traditional slideshow presentations are one-dimensional (linear) but Slides can be two-dimensional, which opens up some intriguing possibilities.

The free version is pretty good. You can try Slides yourself at Slides.com. In my own tinkering, I've found it very easy to get started. If you'd like CAT to offer a workshop on this topic, leave a comment.

Photo credit: Khedara ආරියරත්න 蒋龙.
For other PowerPoint alternatives, see The Whiteboard Blog.

Published on Leave a comment on Tips to Caffeinate Your Presentations

by Janice Florent

In his book “Brain Rules”, John Medina, cognitive psychologist and University of Washington professor, suggests the time limit of an audience before zoning out is about ten minutes. Given this short attention span, what can you do to keep an audience engaged?

To address this problem, some educators are beginning to take this timing to heart, stopping to give students the opportunity to think-pair-share, answer questions, discuss what they just learned or project what's coming next.

In a recent article, Dr. Lynell Burmark, winner of Stanford University’s prestigious Walter Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, lists three tips to enhance presentations. One tip is the use of pictures, like the well-known poster above, as a way to ask questions. For example, toward the end of a class period, project the image and then assign as homework to find out everything students can about it, including who the woman was and what she represents in the image.

Another tip is to compare and contrast. Display (and annotate) images side-by-side while small groups of students discuss those similarities and differences.

Lastly, Dr. Burmark suggests you take video breaks. These breaks can be used to show illustrative videos.

For more information, read Dr. Burmark's article, “3 Tips to Caffeinate Teacher and Student Presentations.”

Published on Leave a comment on Avoid Death by PowerPoint

by Janice Florent

Nowadays more classrooms (virtual and face-to-face) have the ability to project and share a variety of computer-based materials. One of the most common methods of sharing information with students is to use PowerPoint presentations. Although PowerPoint can be a powerful teaching tool, it has been soundly criticized for producing boring presentations, full of endless content that fails to show context and relationships between ideas. This tendency of PowerPoint obviously works against what professors should strive for: stimulating students to connect ideas and engage in critical thinking.

I came across these tips in an Atomic Learning blog post that may help to resuscitate PowerPoint presentations:

  • Mix up your media – don’t rely solely on text or clipart, consider other media types (e.g. photos, video clips, music)
  • Use eye-catching graphics/software - an impactful visual experience can be created when you use eye-catching software and graphics
  • Send content ahead of time - consider "flipping" your presentation
  • Intersperse content with discussion, group exercises, and reflection time

If these tips have piqued your interest, you can read more in the article, 6 Ways to Avoid Death by PowerPoint.