PowerPoint Woes
Marc Minkler
Published
in the Winter 2006 issue of the
Ah,
the wonders and woes of PowerPoint can sometimes make or break a classroom
experience for both the students as well as the instructor. Having used the
program for many years, I have had presentations that I was proud to make and
use, and others that ended up in the virtual trash can. What is probably the
most important thing to remember about PowerPoint is that it is a lot like a
hammer. Both are merely tools, used for a larger purpose. With them, we can
build a beautiful home, an incredible presentation, or smash the heck out of
our fingers. By the way, I would not recommend
keeping a hammer near your computer for inspiration… it’s far too tempting…
PowerPoint
cannot teach your topic for you.
If
you are ill prepared to teach a subject, adding pretty pictures or flashy text
entrances will not overcome it. I have sat through classes where instructors
have not known the first thing about what they were teaching, but because they
produced or obtained a PowerPoint presentation, they were now masters. Use PowerPoint
to teach what you know, not what you
want to know! Additionally, you may indeed be a master of the topic at hand,
but if you cannot teach it, or understand the different learning styles of your
audience, you are doomed to fail. Review adult learning styles, and incorporate
them into your presentation. Once you know what and how to teach something…
Don’t change
how you teach.
One
critical caveat instructors must follow is not
to change how they teach! Don’t alter your style, your approach to students,
your techniques to get (and hold) students’ attention. When I teach, I tend to
walk around, change my voice level, and use techniques I have learned from
other instructors, and my own experiences. If you are an instructor who quivers
at the thought of using a VCR, perhaps PowerPoint isn’t for you. That’s okay!
An instructor cannot be a slave to PowerPoint, but rather strive to master it
to accentuate his or her own personal style. Far too many instructors go from
being animated, interesting, and dynamic when “PowerPoint-less” to stiff,
boring, and forced with PowerPoint. (Unfortunately some also started that way!)
I
learned to teach with an outline, and even after teaching the same topic
repeatedly, carried an outline with me to refer to if (and when) I got stuck. The
students never saw what I wrote on it, they were notes that were meaningful
only to me. Now I have “cleaned up” my notes, and use the PowerPoint slides as
my outline. My knowledge fills in the gaps of the outline, the same way I used
to teach in the “pre-PowerPoint” days, yet I have the outline to refer to, and
more importantly, to keep me on track. Hopefully none of us would ever even
consider simply reading the textbook for our presentation, so don’t do it with
PowerPoint! This can be avoided by taking the time to…
Look at your
presentation!
Spell
check is just not enough here. Save your presentation. Walk away from it. Do
something non-EMS related (hopefully you can still remember something!) Then
come back to the presentation, and watch it. Don’t teach it, don’t look to put
cool text or sound effects in, but examine your slides. Would you enjoy seeing
them? What does your audience want from this class? Would you sit in a dark,
hot classroom next to the person who keeps sniffling and retain the basic
message? Are there so many words on the screen that even at your desk you have
to squint to read them? When you project this on the big screen, it doesn’t get
better! Use the slides as an outline… the fewer words the better! Your lecture
should NOT be written out on the slides! PowerPoint also has some cool effects,
but if you choose to make your words appear letter by letter, especially with a
long word, I have actually seen students start to stab themselves with their
pencils to ease the pain.
Another
important consideration is colors. A dark background with dark text results in
unreadable slides. I will often change the same lecture I teach at night to a
different color for a daytime session, simply for readability. If possible, go
to the classroom where you will teach and try the slides out. Sit in the back. This
gives you the best sense of the colors that read well.
If
you choose to use sounds, use them appropriately. When talking about lung sounds, put the sound of rales into your slide and discuss
the sound. The PowerPoint sound effect of an audience clapping and cheering at
the end of a slide show may not go over well if your presentation was a flop. Additionally,
put away the Emergency Squad 51 station tones. I mean it. Really.
We’ve all heard it. A million times.
Revise,
Revise, Revise!
I
recently wrote 5000+ PowerPoint slides for the Emergency Care text book (Limmer, O’Keefe, & Dickinson
through Brady Publishing). This was the 10th edition of the book. Now
I’ll be honest, not a whole lot has changed in how to stop a wound from
bleeding to require ten editions, but our audience sure has changed! Students
want up-to-date information, pictures, and research. I can’t imagine trying to
teach an EMT class with the stone tablets I learned from, so don’t let your
PowerPoint slides become stagnant. Revise before the class, and then after the
class, taking what went well and what didn’t, and revising your slides again. I
have lectures I have taught 20 times or more, and I have 20 still improving
versions of it!
“Everything
in moderation” can sum up PowerPoint. Teach what you know. Teach in the way you
know how to teach. Review what it is you are teaching, and then revise it to make
it better. This takes times to do, and effort on your part, but I for one enjoy
teaching, and PowerPoint helps me to be better at it.
Marc Minkler is a firefighter/paramedic with
© 2006 by Jacqueline B. Vaniotis