Steve Kinney

Keep It Simple

Don’t overcrowd your PowerPoint. Even if you have a Smartboard and you’re doing a lesson on proofreading: do not overcrowd it. Less is more.

When we teach thematic units and large lessons, we do so with one main purpose — to transfer a set of simple ideas or skills to our students. Hopefully, if we attack a concept from enough angles, it will stick. Sometimes this is called a teaching point. Other times it is called an objective. It doesn’t matter which name you give it.

Use your PowerPoint to emphasize your main point. Do not use it as a script. A given slide should have the six word crux of what your talking about and nothing more. Use the PowerPoint to emphasize the underlying melody — not to increase the volume. Make slides that reinforce your message, not repeat it.

Break the Rules

By default, Microsoft encourages you to use bullets. Don’t.

Seth Godin advises (keep it mind, his advice was intended for a different audience):

Here are the five rules you need to remember to create amazing Powerpoint presentations:

1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
2. No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.

The home run is easy to describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you’re going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they’ll see the image (and vice versa).

You’re a teacher. You’ve found creative and unorthodox uses for all sorts of tools. Don’t let PowerPoint be the exception. If you only need a PowerPoint to switch maps during your lesson — so be it. Just display pictures if you need to.

Create Emotion

Seth Godin has a great idea. Don’t include any words in your PowerPoint; use dramatic pictures to frame your main point. Godin argues that the purpose of communication is to convey emotion. Use a exciting image to elicit your student’s attention, then hit them with your main point. I recommend doing this in the first slide. Use the first slide to create a mystery and unravel the mystery during your lesson. I got this idea from Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It works.

I frequently use PowerPoint slides to generate suspense. The top of the slide has a general question to the class. When I click, the answer appears. This sounds deceptively simple and it is, but there is something dramatic about the answer already being hidden; students want desperately to see if they were right.

(Photo by garethjmsaunders)

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