The Big Picture

Part of the Boston Globe’s online space, The Big Picture posts amazing high quality images of recent events.
Particular posts I found moving/incredible/inspiring:

• Eruption of Chaiten Volcano, Chile
• Soaked Swiss Soccer
• Mississippi Floodwaters in Iowa

Typography as art

I only recently realized there’s this culture of utilizing typography in a wide variety of artistic ways. Some of my favorites:

Kinetic typography

The art of using spoken text to create animated text which extends, adds to, or changes your perception of the original text.

Who’s on First?

V is for Vendetta

Typographic animation

This short animated video utilizes only letters, numbers, and symbols right off the keyboard to tell its story.

Death and Taxes

I just ran across this yesterday thanks to BoingBoing.net. It’s a graphical depiction of the United States federal discretionary budget (i.e. where you income taxes go). Incredibly detailed yet incredible to look at, it’s quick way to visualize the priorities of the government based upon how they fund the various departments. You can zoom and pan around the image at their site to get a better look. If you really like it, you can buy it as a 24-inch by 36-inch poster (that’s roughly 61-cm by 91-cm for those world citizens out there).

Wow! SSOL!

We’re covering volcanoes in class right now, and as a cumulative project for the volcanic activity topic, I have each student select a different volcano (I provide a list of volcanoes that have either been active fairly recently or have had some spectacular eruptions in the past), and then create a presentation as if they were a travel agent trying to “sell” a trip to their volcano to adventure travelers. They’re required to have specific information about the type of volcano it is, how it erupts, etc., but they’re highly encouraged to take it to the next level by including trip itineraries, cool things to do near the volcano, and so forth.In the past I’ve been deluged with presentations from bullet-point hell in which students simply read directly off their slides. It stinks sitting through one 5-minute presentation like that. Imagine sitting through 85-90…yeah, I was going crazy by the end of the presentations- trying as hard as I could to not punish students going later for my self-created forced torture of watching poorly designed presentations for four class periods.

This year, I made a small (but extremely significant) change. I told them they could only have 2 words MAX on each slide- and it’d be fine with me if their presentation contained no text at all (except for citations, of course). I mean it too. Most students created a title slide that looked something like this:

Nope. Can’t do that. Volcano name, plus “by: your name” counts as four words (I did concede that the name of their volcano only counts as one word, otherwise whoever covers Mount St. Helens wouldn’t even be able to put the name of their volcano on a slide). The classes are in the middle of designing their presentations right now, and it’s been a struggle for them:

“How can I give a presentation with no words?”

“You mean I have to memorize everything?”

“What do you mean ‘of’ is a word? That shouldn’t count, it’s barely two letters!”

Students can have note cards with information for the presentations with them while they present, so they don’t have to memorize, though it’s amazing to me that they’ve been so “well”-trained at designing poor presentations. Students are still in the middle of designing presentations as I type this, and I must say they’re looking pretty promising. I’ll let you know how they turn out!

Resources:

• List of significant volcanoes (by no means exclusive- I generally update it each year with volcanoes that have rumbled to life recently)
  • See a tour of these 47 volcanoes in Google Earth (.kmz)
• Project information (feel free to comment below with suggestions, etc.)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: volcanoes, presentations, lessons, projects, geology, science, design, PowerPoint

There were several students that expressed regret at the demise of the bullet points. It’s easier for them to just copy down exactly what it says (of course it is, they don’t have to actually pay attention or comprehend to do that). How well they’ve been trained by their past experiences!

Before

[slideshare id=265122&doc=old-journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth-1202953941596173-3&w=500]

After

[slideshare id=265038&doc=journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth-12029484236194-4&w=500]

These presentation design upgrades seem to be all the rage. Since my last post I’ve found two new (to me) posts by edubloggers discussing (and even sharing) good design in presentations. And I thought I was ahead of the curve on this one…

Check them out:

• A Quick One While He’s Away at Apace of Change
  • Includes a before & after presentations (Hmm…sounds familiar ) on Medieval Anti-Semitism
• The Electrifying Sign Language of Images at Journeys
  •  Discusses the power of images and video in presentations

I welcome your feedback on my presentations. I even look forward to constructive criticism!

The last week or so, my classes have been covering material that I made PowerPoint slideshows for several years ago. While at the time, I put in lots of images and even embedded some video, I found myself dreading to give those presentations to my classes. I started pondering whether there wasn’t a better way to utilize slideshows than what I was doing. I became discontent with my presentations

As if the heavens could hear me, wisdom rained down upon me.

Wisdom Bit #1: This fall, I happened upon Lawrence Lessig’s talk on copyright at the TED conference. While the subject matter was interesting, I was enthralled (& engaged) by his simple use of visuals and high-contrast text. It made me want to go design my own presentation right then and there (it was a pretty busy time for me, so I didn’t). As I became discontent with my presentations, my thoughts went back to his presentation.

Wisdom Bit #2: On a tip from Wes Fryer on his blog, I’ve subscribed to the Practical Principals podcast. In the first installment I was able to catch, Scott Elias discussed a presentation he gave on how to give engaging presentations. In the show notes, a link was provided to his presentation. I checked that out, and liked what I saw. The wheels were turning…

Wisdom Bit #3: Wes Fryer wrote a post discussing digital storytelling and dual-coding theory. Essentially, dual-coding theory states that when a speaker reads information off of a slide, very often the audience can become overwhelmed because there are two images to pay attention to (the speaker and the projected text). I found this very interesting, as I had previously been under the assumption that reading and projecting the text was helpful to students, as it provided both a visual and auditory pathway for the information. It’s funny what information we believe that isn’t really true.

Wisdom Bit #4: Clay Burell shared a presentation he gave and also wrote a bit on good design in presentations to boot. I especially liked his tip to include a “narrative thread” in presentations. It provides a something for people to grab onto, and combined with slides with relevant images (and very little text), people have to listen to hear the story.

Wisdom Bit #5: At the end of Clay’s post, he provided a link to Dan Meyer’s blog post on how to present. He pretty much reiterated what I had already heard and read from Scott, Wes, and Clay; but it was an excellently written post with great examples. I think what I took away most from this post was his statement: “If I can look at your slidedeck and determine the full content of your presentation, it’s carrying too much information.”

Finally, I had direction.

I think what struck me most about this process went far beyond my integration of a new and improved method. The online network that provided the wisdom is the big story here. Though no one whose wisdom was included in this post put their content online with the specific thought of helping me escape the doldrums of antiquated presentations, the simple task of accessing distant knowledge is pretty amazing in itself. The sources of my wisdom were located in California, Oklahoma, Colorado, Missouri, Korea, and California again. It was totally asynchronous, and exactly what I needed. I don’t have a well-developed edtech network yet, but just because I can’t tweet a question and get back 50 responses yet doesn’t mean I can’t take advantage of the network.

Thanks, network. You’re the best!

Stay tuned. I’ll post my old presentation compared to the new one.