Rethinking Powerpoint

This page is for holding information relating to the use of Powerpoint. It is not a complete tutorial, but more of a collection of ideas to share with teachers during an afterschool meeting. While this page discusses and uses screenshots from 'Powerpoint', almost all if it is applicable to other presentation software, such as the Open Office software students in AISD will soon be using exclusively.

PPT Resources

Many technology gurus are writing now about Visual Literacy and how Powerpoint has become a beast that doesn't nourish visual literacy skills. For an extended look at that concept, Make Lessons Stick is a page in our wiki with a good number of resources. 

Wesley Fryer's blog has published a teacher workshop during eTechOhio2009 given by Alvin Trusty. You can watch Trusty's entire workshop on using presentation software to make great visual presentations as well as learn about copyright rules at the same time. Trusty cites all of his sources and gives many links to show how he did certain Powerpoint skills during his presentation. It's 40 minutes long, but you can fast forward to the parts you want to watch and rewatch. (Using Wesley's webpage because of the value of his other resources as well.)

For some tutorial videos, consult Atomic Learning's website. No login is required inside the school district.

PPT Tip 1

Using the visual on the page to make the point has become the growing trend. However, how do we hold students accountable for their research and planned Powerpoint discussion? 

The 'Notes' field is used to create presentation notes for presenters. Most people have learned to put their words in the body of the slide where everyone can read along.  By putting the presentation ideas in the Notes section, the students can use the slide for visual impact and still have notes to use for the presentation.  When they print their Powerpoint to turn in or when the teacher looks at their work on her computer, the notes will be seen and the student will be able to show the complete context of their work.

PPT Tip 2

A very entertaining speaker made the point for me, "Guns don't kill people,  * * * Bullets Do."  The bullet outline in presentations is overused and can be done without in most circumstances.  An alternative could be consecutive slides that have the bulleted items on them.

PPT Tip 3

But the best alternative to text-heavy screens is to use visually important slides. Make the image the entire size of the slide and place the words on top of the picture.  Make your topic idea be the text, but support it with the oral presentation for that slide.  (Don't read long slides.) Large background photos can help tell the story of the slide, leaving the speaker time to say the important verbal message.  Photos can be inserted and stretched to fit the slide and have a large impact.

PPT Photos Tip 3.1

Controling the photo search can be tricky.  Teachers want students to have the freedom to find the picture they need, but students can spend excessive time searching and being distracted by the internet.  If the students are all working on the same theme, the teacher could find a good collection of photos and save them on the network for students to use.

PPT Photos Tip 3.2

A good Google search can find great photos. However, if you do find the perfect picture, make sure you 1) get the original artwork and 2) copy the link for that picture so you can give credit.   The picture to the right here shows part of the thumbnail in a Google image search. It say that the original image is 1280 pixels by 1277 pixels. A picture of at least 800 pixels would be good for a full slide picture in a presentation. Copying the thumbnail however, is what happens often and the image on the slide is much too small and get pixelated.  And, remember that you can right-click, copy, and paste the image onto your slide.  Often, a better place to find photos is on Flickr.com.  Using the Creative Commons in Flickr can eliminate the copyright issues with copying images from Google. Click the 'more photos' link and then search using your keywords.

PPT Photos Tip 3.3

You found the perfect picture but you only want a portion of the picture. Using the crop tool, you can edit the image without having to use an external image editor. You will need to first view the Picture Toolbar using the 'View' menu.

Then, simple select the picture and click the crop tool.   Click on the side, top or bottom handles to crop out portions of the picture.

PPT Tip 4

Clear criteria, while it could be seen as restricting, can help students focus on creating their content piece instead of the bells and whistles of a slide.  For the first project, limit to 4 slides, no animation, 1 font, 1 picture per page, and mandatory presentor notes for their 8 facts on the Industrial Revolution. As the students get more adept at presentations, add more options in future projects. My criteria list will be what I consider as my 'must have's'.  There are a number of grading rubrics out there that may help you reverse-engineer your criteria. Rubric1  Rubric2 

PPT Tip 5

Templates! A template can just be a read-only file that you create as an outline for students. They open the file on the server, but it opens as a new document for each student. By creating the template file, you can design the basic format of the project allowing the students to jump right into the project with their content, without being concerned about setting up the slides. Any document can be made into a template by right-clicking on the file and selecting Properties. Under the General tab, select the Read-Only attribute and the file will be over-written by students who open the file.

PPT Tip 6

Don't overlook the 1 slide presentation file. Our IT wiki page on Microsoft Office and Student IPG Products  has a deeper explanation about using presentation software to create IPG products such as the 8 page mini book, the pyramid, or the flap book when creating student products.

PPT Tip 7

Lastly, our UnitedStreaming wiki page has some good directions for putting video media into a Powerpoint slide. It's a nice touch!

PPT Tip 8

So your students created a bunch of presentations. Teacher laptops and newer teacher desktop computer can burn CDs. Some teachers will spend hours burning CDs to send home with students. There is no going back and fixing a created CD and that costs valuable time and money.  Some school adopted the student USB Key drive so students could take their work home. There is an expense to that as well and they could get lost/stolen. Presentation files are often too big to email. So uploading the files to a teacher's webpage can be a nice alternative.

When uploading the files to your webpage, name the file so the user will know what they are downloading before they do so. A fantastic alternative is to upload the presentations to slideshare.com or a similar service. They will host your presentation file so that you can embed the file into your webpage. Now the user can view the presentations without ever downloading anything. (Example at the bottom of this portfolio.)