I was reading through some of our seniors’ blog posts tonight. They post updates on their Senior Exhibit progress, sharing their ups and downs. Recently some of them have been doing “practice presentations.”
This student’s post caught my eye because I remember when she picked her topic, and we had several lengthy conversations about it. After her practice, teachers in the room offered suggestions for the “real” presentation….and this is what she wrote:
The teachers also suggested that I add bullet points to my powerpoint slides…
Now I don’t know what she had on the slides…perhaps they were messy, too filled with text….I don’t know. But the answer surely isn’t bullet points.
I wish we had time to work with students in meaningful ways about creating solid presentations. I know many of the teachers in the Upper School know how to do this, but not all. And for any given presentation, random teachers make suggestions based on what they “think” best. So this student will now go and create the standard business slides, each filled with the bulleted notes she will probably repeat in her presentation.
I know everyone means well, and I’m sure there were other truly helpful comments. But let’s drop the bullet points and use slides as powerful backdrops to the ideas we are presenting.
Uploaded on March 12, 2008by mac steve