Visual First Aid

I feel like I need to go back and change not just one slide that I have made, but all of my slides from all of my presentations – someone please grab the visual first aid kit!

I exaggerate. I do tend to keep the amount of text on the minimal side, but I have made some basic errors such as being addicted to white backgrounds, and not using animations and contrast to direct the audience’s attention to where I want it to be. In this week’s task, I will also incorporate elements of storytelling as set out by Garr Reynolds; interestingly I have worked with a professional storyteller before – Phil Dermott – the man is a legend, and brings stories to life. Also, I will adopt almost all of the David Phillips suggestions.

Light Bulb Moment

I have been using PowerPoint, Google Slides, and occasionally Keynote for years. I knew that I didn’t like the templates that come with the apps, so I would more often than not make up my own or download from third-party websites such as Slides Carnival.

I would pick the one that best suited the theme of my lesson (technology) and that was pretty much my only criterion.  The only other thing that I paid attention to was making sure the text was easy to read, and that it wasn’t Comic Sans!

Watching and reading this week’s material truly felt like a light bulb – moment, in terms of what I wasn’t doing!

I have decided to go with the following, truly boring and uninspiring slide, I had in a presentation on how to create a positive digital footprint. The target audience* for this was school leaders and college counselors at an ACAMIS conference, so I felt that I could make it look like this; I promise that the other slides were much more interesting – in fact, I used Petcha Kutcha for the remaining section * later I would also use the same slide with grade 11 students preparing for college applications.

What on earth was I thinking?

You can see I put little or no effort into this slide. It literally has a white background and black text. What was I thinking!? It was a hugely important slide, as it contained the instructions for the main group activity for that session.

Feedback Protocol

So I set out to get feedback from teachers and Grade 12 students, using a variation of the Equity Protocol. I spoke to the students and teachers, giving them the context of the presentation to build up a solid level of understanding. I then asked them to write down on sticky notes, answers to the questions below. Each person had 90 seconds to answer the following 3 questions (I based these on the essential questions from the unit):

  1. What did you see that would make it engaging to the audience?
  2. What do you think could be enhanced?
  3. What do you see that would hinder learning?

Afterward, the group placed the sticky notes on the whiteboard, in the correct question category. I then read the responses. Finally, I reflected on the group on what I had learned; hoping that my colleagues and students would not make the same mistakes as I did!

Here are some snapshots:

1. What did you see that would make it engaging to the audience?

  • Easy to read text overall
  • The title was larger than the rest of the text

2. What do you think could be enhanced?

  • Add color
  • Add images to enhance to presentation style
  • Give out printed version for referral during the task

3. What do you see that would hinder learning?

  • Too many instructions
  • The text is too small
  • It is not exciting – nothing there says, this sounds like a fun activity!

Based on this feedback and the design principles from this week’s resources – I will aim to do the following:

  1. I will design the slide to cater to my initial target audience – teachers.
  2. Have 1 message on the slide, instead of the 4 messages currently on it; remove the nonessential.
  3. I will create an additional 3 slides, again 1 slide per message.
  4. I will summarize each sentence into a word or picture.
  5. I will use a dark background with contrasting text.
  6. I will use animations to change the color of the text during the presentation; not shown in the screenshots.
  7. I will use a maximum of 6 pieces of information per slide.

Putting Pen to Paper

Now, onto the new slide design, on paper, and with no tech! I annotated each design, which you can see below.

Seeing the World Differently

I really enjoyed this week’s task, as I learned some basic tricks that can have a huge impact on visual aids in the class. It certainly has me rethink my use of presentations in the classroom, never again will a sentence find its way onto my slide shows. I found it quite fun to do away with my laptop when redesigning the slide, as it forced me to think more deeply about the message I was trying to convey.