Practice what you teach!

I had to laugh when we were given this task. I have been teaching for 14 years and 10 of those where in the UK. When I first started teaching Information Technology we looked at presentations as part of the syllabus and discussed many of the points highlighted in Garr Reynold’s, Presentation Zen tip sheet. In fact we were constantly told how good a pupil should be in Information Technology because of their PowerPoint skills, skills we rarely saw. We used to KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid!)

• Select a simple consistent background (there was a craze for rainbow effect backgrounds at the time)
• Choose your font carefully (Comic Sans was the pupils popular choice at the time)
• No ClipArt or Word Art
• Limit the Animations (we had a lot of flying text and the typewriter effect was particularly annoying!)
• Ensure Animations come in at the correct time
• Limit your text (we recommended a maximum of 6 bulleted items)
• Do not read from your Presentation - look at your audience!

Even though this was 14 years ago I still see the same mistakes in the presentations of my pupils and the presentations I observe within training sessions.I would like to state that I am not great at creating presentations. I have never had to worry about too much text as I can not read from a script. The words jump around like pesky little fleas, so I have always limited text on a slide to snappy bullet points and I “freestyle" the presentations with a few notes to prompt me. Through this twist of fate I have never suffered from “reading from the slide” even when I presented as a child at school (though there was no PowerPoint) or at University (when we used a flipboard and an overhead projector) or within a business context (we had PowerPoint then!).However, I have never been good at making presentations inspiring, they tend to be more functional and neglect the design elements that Garr Reynold’s discussed . I tend to have a title, a bulleted list and a plain background. Sometime I may also add a topical image. I then rely on sheer personality to keep my “audience” engaged.I have therefore decided to create the first semester slides for the parent workshops I am running. They are only supposed to be prompts and attention grabbers as I have shared resources and I am hoping for either discussions or active participation, as in some session we experiment with different Apps. However,  I felt I wanted a presentation to catch their attention at the start.[googleapps domain="docs" dir="presentation/d/13hWiEE_J-7J-obIfOqiNC41Js9dctIgCSVWzw4qmpQo/embed" query="start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" width="480" height="299" /]I have tried to use bold images that support the presentation and add to the overall design. I have also researched into the colours that are best suited to dyslexic viewers. Essentially contrast is good, but not black and white and a clear font is essential. I have therefore chosen dark blue writing on a grey background (except when an image is used), with the RobotoSlab font. I would normally add a link to a video, however, I think it looks a lot more professional with the video embedded.  I have also added some links so that the parents can experiment with the Apps discussed, either in the session or at home. This has been an interesting journey as although I have taught good presentational technique for many years, I have probably been guilty of “bashing out” my end products instead of planning and developing to ensure that they are well made and have a high design value, as I would naturally do in film production. It is interesting sometimes you forget to practice the very things you teach!