Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mag3737/

• 10 – No more than ten slides in your presentation. This key number is supposed to help focus your audiences minds on your message, rather than your slides.
• 20 – If you have a one hour meeting, aim to finish your slides in no more than 20 minutes. What with technical problems, questions and chatting, you’ll end up running out of time and going too fast at the end if you try to cram in too much.
• 30 – No font size smaller than 30. If you want your audience to be able to read your slides (you do!) then make sure your text is legible. If you find yourself trying to use a smaller font to squeeze it all in, ask yourself:
  • do you need all that text anyway?
  • shouldn’t the main message come from you, not your slides?
  • wouldn’t it be better to spread the information over more than one slide?

What made me decide to point all this out here though is because I found a nice little presentation on SlideShare today by Cory O’Brien that explains all of this in a nice, visual way. Have a look:

Guy even goes as far as giving us a suggested theme of what should go on each slide. Although I think this is far more relevant to marketers and business-people, I think it’s worth bearing in mind for education, too (and of course it works excellently for a business English teacher.) You can see Guy’s suggestions on Cory’s slide number 3 above. Better still, why not listen to it from the horses mouth Guy himself:

So, there we have it. If I haven’t convinced you, I hope Guy has!

Got a great PowerPoint tip? Is there a mnemonic-like “rule” you tell yourelf before starting to plan a presentation? Be sure to tell us about it in the comments section below!

All the best and happy presenting!

Seth.

Related posts:

1. Death By PowerPoint (and how to avoid it!)
2. Death By PowerPoint Comprehension Questions

Blogging with EFL Students – Part 1 – Setting Up a Blog

and here:

Blogging with EFL Students – Part 2 – Blogs Grow With Comments

In this final set of slides I’ll discuss a couple of the essential things every blogger should be able to do to whether they be a teacher or a student. This is certainly not an exhaustive list of everything a blogger should do, but it should help you get the final basics in place.

Uploading a photo to your blog post makes it far easier on the eye and therefore more likely to be read. Adding a link to other related posts or interesting information helps give your reader a bit of background and adds context to your post and finally sorting out your profile lets your reader find out a bit more about you which, hopefully, will make them more likely to want to connect with you.

So, on to the slides: Once again, please do ask if there is anything you’re unclear about or if you want a bit of help with something. If you think I’ve missed out another vital skill for bloggers, do tell me. I’d love to know and will happily update the slides in the future. Down there at the bottom in the comments section, let it rip!

Take care and all the best,

Seth.

Related posts:

1. Blogging with EFL Students – Part 1 – Setting Up a Blog
2. Blogging with EFL Students – Part 2 – Blogs Grow With Comments
3. WordPress Blog & Website

For example this year at the high-school I work at, we’ve been discussing social issues that we feel strongly about in our personal blogs. We’ve also used a class blog to share hints and advice for classmates about how they can improve their own blogs.

Although the slides in this series are all quite specific to my own students (and trainee teachers,) I hope they can be helpful to other teachers and teacher-trainers, too. I’ve learnt a lot from what other people have generously shared over the internet and I hope now to be able to “put a bit back” for others.

In this second set of slides we discuss how important comments are to a blog (and a blogger) and how to enable them. The slides use screenshots from Blogger itself. On occasion things have changed in Blogger slightly from when I originally wrote this guide, but the basics have remained more or less the same.

If you want any more information about edublogging, or if you’d like to share a lesson idea that you’ve tried out with your students, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.

All the very best!

Seth.

Related posts:

1. Blogging with EFL Students – Part 1 – Setting Up a Blog
2. Death By PowerPoint (and how to avoid it!)
3. Social Media in Plain English