Prior to my time in education, I worked in the high tech industry for many years, so I understand very much the Death by PowerPoint concepts brought forward in this unit. Having more than a passing knowledge of PowerPoint myself, I used some of that knowledge with my students when I first started teaching 15 years ago. At that time, I was attempting to convey middle grade Social Studies content on a 25 inch wall mounted monitor! Needless to say, I had to try my best to eliminate unimportant words in the presentations I provided to my students. In hindsight, it was a less than stellar attempt, in most cases. I learned much from that effort.
Fast forwarding several years, I took on the role of Vice Principal of a K-8 school, and tasked to develop a plan and train teachers in effective use of technology in the classroom. Part of this process included helping the teachers, and more importantly, their students, become effective users of Google Slides (aka "Presentation"). It seemed to be an ongoing, and slow, process to improve the students' results. I was somewhat amazed at what teachers would allow regarding this important - and potentially VERY effective- tool. I'm not sure what the reasoning was, but it did take several years of training before results at the middle school level were consistent. And even then, certain teachers never really wrapped their heads around it. By this point, I was able to successfully teach the students in my 7th grade Social Studies classroom the characteristics of a powerful presentation, so I knew the students at my school were certainly capable. I shared the rubrics I used and did my best to work with the teachers. The results came, but very slowly.
This is interesting to me because an effective presentation can really help support the growth in, and give students practice with, important skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, and, certainly, effective communication. Speaking with teachers, they universally acknowledged how important these so-called "21st Century" skills were to develop. And yet, when provided with an excellent 'vehicle,' to practice these skills, it seemed some of the teachers really struggled getting across to students what we learned about in this unit. Namely, keywords only, severely limiting 'flashy' transitions, animations, etc. that add little to no value, the power of images and how they can effectively limit/eliminate words, and so on. As I learned in an early EdTech class, our audio and visual learning channels are extremely limited, and easily overwhelmed, and so limiting the distractions and extras are paramount to a successful, effective presentation.
After working for several years with the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teachers, the presentations the students produced gradually improved, and the vast majority of students truly understood the power of a high-quality (usually multimedia) presentation, and how it could - and did- augment their learning. I'm still unsure why it was such a long process, but I know know that, if faced with similar training to take place, I need to be extremely diligent and clear with both teachers and students regarding how this powerful communication tool can be used to maximum effectiveness.
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