PowerPoint: Do No Harm

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot and how it applies to teaching is graphic design and PowerPoint.  I think we’ve all seen and experienced atrocious PowerPoint presentations in our school or professional lives.  As a teacher, how can I use this really powerful tool in a responsible and engaging manner? Dan Meyer of dy/dan has thought about this question as well and has put together and delivered a really great talk about this very subject.  His series of posts and presentation called “PowerPoint: Do No Harm” should be required reading/viewing for all student teachers.  While his content ties specifically into math, the vast majority of it is easily tied to the social studies.  A couple key points that I’m trying to adopt with my own PowerPoint slides are:

• It Matters: Color choices, alignment, font size– it all matters.  Inconsistencies may be annoying over the course of a day, but over 180 days they are truly detrimental.
• Don’t Try to Make PowerPoint Do What It Can’t: Dan argues that PowerPoint really only does justice to one type of media, images.  Text, charts, and tables can all be portrayed in a better manner.  So, that means you shouldn’t litter your PowerPoints with hard to read paragraphs of text, long bulleted lists, complex tables etc.  Think of PowerPoint like an old school slide projector and you and your students will be better off.
• Get a Remote and Move Around: Using a remote to advance your slides frees you up to move around the classroom.  Every teacher knows that one of the best forms of behavior management is merely proximity.  Move around the classroom and keep kids focus on you and the projector, not each other.

These are taken almost verbatim from Dan’s presentation and blog, so I highly encourage you to go to the source for more information.  You won’t be disappointed.