Can you Create an amazing Presentation?

As teachers we tend to present regularly to our students.  I have found that as I have more experience and grow as a learner that I am starting to share more with my peers and have just started to give presentations to my colleagues too.

Now I don’t know if pre-service teachers get more advice these days about how to create presentations, but we certainly didn’t when I studied at University.  In the days of digital presentations and collaboration with our audience online, there are so many ways in which we should and could consider our Presentations.

Today we had some internal PD with Jolan Martinez, who is a creative design guru and is currently teaching design at YIS.  He spends countless hours preparing presentations for his classes, and as you start to unravel them it is clear that there are so many layers to consider that I hadn’t even dreamed of.

I wanted to share a few of his key points from the presentation today and as I grow and learn, I hope that I will be able to really delve into the rabbit hole that is presenting creatively.

We focused only on Google Presentations, there is clear reasons for this choice as it enables so many functions that others do not when it comes to working with others.  The ability to have multiple editors, to have comment function in real time and to allow students to click out and into new slides or linked work enables your G Presentation to become more like your website or resource where all the centre of activity can occur around your course.

Some/Initial take aways for me included:

Example 1:  What is the purpose of your Presentation?

• the purpose will affect the way you create your presentation
• consider the projector you are using (this can affect colours)
• Create templates that suit the purpose of your presentation so you can use them again (and borrow, beg or steal other great examples to add to your library)
• Time put in can be huge but as you build your templates and your experience, this process will be quicker and you can re-use your ideas from previous work.
• Get feedback on a presentation that is going out to a wider audience to check that your focus is clear and that slides serve their purpose

Example 2:

• Be aware of where the viewer’s eye will land first
• Use colour to code commands for student or participants
• Edit images to match the colour scheme of your presentations
• Be aware of your font, text spacing and use of lines (frames, to separate text and images etc)

Example 3:

• use gifs to jazz up your slides
• create short animated graphics
• consider lighter colours on darker fonts so the words jump out at you
• Consider the geometry of your slides and use consistent lines and line sizes/frames to make things more appealing.

Example 4:

• rewrite Task Specific Clarifications to make them explicit using Presentations
• Have examples (could be skills or strategy gifs from YouTube to show examples

I had a big whoa moment today.  There is a lot to learn and to grow for me in this area.  I know that this will take up more of my time, but as a new presenter to #Physed workshops and conferences, I want to really make a creative and effective presentation!

If you have any other ideas or resources for guidance – please share them!