Chapter 2 - Creating Slides and Handouts

The author stated that boredom and learning are mutually exclusive, which leads me to talk about my experience today observing middle school kids in a Saturday program that is intended to provide them with skills for success on the Virginia 8th grade writing assessment. Most of us know that the middle school years are tough for the instructors and students for a variety of reasons. Today, I observed the equivalent of Chinese water torture as these students tuned out the teacher that produced PowerPoint slides prepared with Clip Art. I know we have not got to that part of the book yet, but the kids endured the path to boredom through clipart. In our efforts to utilize sanctioned materials, the Clip Art has to go especially for tweens and teenagers. While the teacher used cartoon like Clip Art, which I believe could have been more useful for youngsters, she did keep the text limited on the slides with the bullet point format. Did you know what an Okapi was before reading this chapter? It reminded me of an animal that I had learned about years ago, which is the Tapir. I read a book to kids Happy as a Tapir and I did not know what that animal was or what part of the world it was from. The useful tip of showing an image first and following up with text brought home the point on how we learn. We take in information through the auditory and visual channels. It is imperative that they are not overloaded, so that information can be captured and transitioned from short-term memory to long-term memory. Last, the tips on how to present the information to the audience, particularly the handouts was useful. The parameters for the two-side handout for the audience was recommended. These strategies can be helpful in producing better presentations. References Burmark, L. (2011), They Snooze You Lose: The Educator's Guide To Successful Presentations