Michael Weston discusses avoiding "Death by PowerPoint" or DBP. DBP can be caused by slide reading, where presenters simply read the text on slides, and by including too much information (TMI) on slides. To avoid these problems, presenters should have no more than one idea per slide, use a larger font size so all text fits on a slide, and limit the number of bullet points. The document then provides an example of improving slides about the water cycle by removing unnecessary text and limiting information on each slide to just one concise point.
4. Slide Reading Slide Reading is defined as the seemingly unavoidable urge to read your slides to your audience as they themselves are reading your slides, thereby ensuring that they will be annoyed after the first slide and completely disengaged after the third slide.
5. Slide Reading Everybody (else) does it The laws of gravity and boredom do not apply to me Rehearsal Incomplete
6. Too Much Information When creating slides, if you have to use a small font size to fit all of your text, you might have TMI If you can't fit the graph or photo because you've got so much text, you might have TMI If your slide leaves you with nothing to say, you might have TMI
7. TMI Old rule: Maximum six bullets New rule: One idea = One slide 12/16 -> 6/8 -> 3/4 = avoiding TMI
8. Ok, now that we know what causes DBP, what can we do about it? ...Let's take a look
10. The Water Cycle v.1 Evaporation - Evaporation is when the sun heats up water in rivers or lakes or the ocean and turns it into vapor or steam. The water vapor or steam leaves the river, lake or ocean and goes into the air. Condensation - Water vapor in the air gets cold and changes back into liquid, forming clouds. This is called condensation. Transpiration - Transpiration is the process by which plants lose water out of their leaves. Transpiration gives evaporation a bit of a hand in getting the water vapor back up into the air. Precipitation - is the process by which water returns to the earth in the form of rain or snow.
11. The Water Cycle v.2 Evaporation Condensation Transpiration Precipitation
17. The Water Cycle v.1 (again) Evaporation - Evaporation is when the sun heats up water in rivers or lakes or the ocean and turns it into vapor or steam. The water vapor or steam leaves the river, lake or ocean and goes into the air. Condensation - Water vapor in the air gets cold and changes back into liquid, forming clouds. This is called condensation. Transpiration - Transpiration is the process by which plants lose water out of their leaves. Transpiration gives evaporation a bit of a hand in getting the water vapor back up into the air. Precipitation - is the process by which water returns to the earth in the form of rain or snow.
Editor's Notes
DBP is death by powerpoint. Ask audience to raise their hand if they have personally experienced DBP. Ask for thoughts on what constitutes DBP
While there are probably dozens of culprits, we're going to tackle the two most common ones today
Read the slide slowly to make your point
1. Is it ok to bore your students if everyone else does? 2. Are you sure you can read slides in an interesting way? 3. Your students can tell when you wing it 4. Slide reading is a symptom of an incomplete presentation, more on this later
Read the slide slowly again to make the point, then ask how many people have seen slides with a mountain of info, charts, graphs, diagrams, etc.
Ask how many people have taught fractions. Dealing with TMI is like reducing fractions, you look at the slides like fractions - can I reduce this?
We're going to look at how we deal with Slide reading and TMI by using a real world example. How many people have taught the Water Cycle before?
Here's the TMI version. It would be pretty hard to have something to say here that wasn't already on the slide. This slide has a very high probability of leading the presenter to read the slide.
This would deal with the slide reading problem, most likely but it still doesn't boil it down very well. No matter how good you are at presenting, you'll reach DBP by the second bullet.
Chad, make a smart art out of this, I can't do it in the online version. A smart art graphic will be more engaging than the previous slide, but by itself, may still lead to DBP depending on how long you talk to this slide.
One slide per idea makes for a much more enjoyable presentation. If you were to take the text from the v.1 slide and paste it into the notes, you could now read your text and have a great multimodal lesson (audio and visual engagement).
Here's the TMI version again. This text is actually pretty good. If you've got text that you want to read, simply boil it down to one idea per slide, paste your bullet point into the notes section, then find an image that conveys your point
