Invest 45 minutes in PowerPoint!

In the same vein as my ‘Life by Powerpoint’ blog post from last year, I have stumbled across another excellent demonstration of useful ways to make PowerPoint presentations less boring for students. Alvin Trusty, Director of Educational Technology at The University of Findlay in Ohio has provided his recorded presentation from the eTechOhio conference of 2008. It’s 45 minutes long. But wait… I know exactly what you’re going to say here.

Eric… I can’t waste 45 minutes watching a PowerPoint presentation on the web. BORING!

If you are a frequent user of PowerPoint in the classroom, then this will be the BEST 45 minutes you will ever spend watching a PowerPoint presentation. Alvin gives tons of tips and tricks and interweaves the topic of best practices in PowerPoint with some very useful concepts in Copyright Law (tailored to the US audience but useful in general to others.) He shares his personal blog and a bunch of links stored in del.icio.us. So instead of ‘wasting’ 45 minutes, I say ‘invest’ 45 minutes and watch this presentation from start to finish. Then leave me a comment below. In your opinion, did you just waste that 45 minutes or not? I want to know!

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Life by PowerPoint!

Ok, you've all heard by now the expression "Death by PowerPoint". Yup, it's a clever expression and it's also true. As teachers and instructors most of us have used PowerPoint in the classroom. It works for us, but sometimes it doesn't work for the learners. They just see too much of it... and lots of it is just boring and mind-numbing.

I need to constantly remind myself of this. In my teaching life I try to keep PowerPoint to a minimum. However, when I use PowerPoint I have to think of ways in which I can make the PowerPoint better for learners.... not just better for me as the teacher.

Vicky Davis, of 'Cool Cat Teacher Blog' fame, has recently cobbled together some information that provides a good refresher to educational practitioners about creating effective PowerPoint presentations. Everyone could use a refresher, including me.

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