How to Put the Power Back into PowerPoint Presentations

Up until recently, I, like many of you reading this, made mistakes when making PowerPoint presentations.  These mistakes took the power out of the PowerPoint presentations I made, and often stopped me from getting my point across too.  I made mistakes, but I made them unconsciously as I copied the style of presentation I had seen many times before, by the lecturers and teachers who had taught me.   Then I was shown the Ted Talks video, 'How To Avoid Death By PowerPoint', by David JP Phillips.  This video changed the way I use PowerPoint, by given me 5 basic rules to follow when creating a PowerPoint presentation:

1. One Message per Slide: More then one message and all other messages get lost.

2. Short Messages: Do not use long sentences or passages.

3. Size: Make sure the most important message in the largest, not the heading.

4. Use Dark Backgrounds: It assists the audience in focusing on the presenter, rather then the presentation.  

5.  Only Have Six Objects per Slide.

Following these rules will help you make presentations more effective.

You can watch David JP Phillips explain why these rules make better PowerPoint presentations in the above video.

Ted Talks - Ken Robinson: How Schools Kill Creativity

In this video, Ken Robinson discusses how schools kill creativity, so that by the time children reach adulthood their creativity has already been drained.  This is a subject that I have discussed many times in the past.  I believe that all educators, whether teaching primary, secondary, or in adult education, need to nurture the creativity of their students, whatever those creative talents may be. Robinson argues that creativity is as important as literacy skills.  We should continue to encourage children and adults with their literacy and numeracy skills, but we should also encourage children and adults to be creative with talents, wherever they lay.  Lets consider if Albert Einstein had not been creative with his mathematical skills, then we would never have had the theory of relativity.  So many writers have used their writing creativity to inspire others to go on to do great things. Society needs to be creative to keep on advancing, as creativity is responsible for the advances in art, media, medicine, technology, music and science. Creativity created the wheel, further creativity created the carriage and even further creativity created the automobile. Creativity is what drives the human race forward, adapting, modernising and advancing; creative thinking makes us evolve.  Ken Robinson makes the point of how schools kill creativity and if we, as teachers, continue to extinguish the creative spark within our students before the fires of creativity take hold, then we will be the ones responsible for the stagnation of society.

Watch the above video and let Ken Robinson inspire us as educators to be more creative in our teaching, so we may nurture the creativity of our students.