Powerpoint Be Gone... You Too Prezi! or Diary of a Colloquium Instructor #7

Am I the only one sick of Powerpoint*? Prezi, which used to be a fun alternative (still is more fun than  Powerpoint) is almost as bad. Ask a bunch of students to create a project and tell them to be creative, they make a Powerpoint with colorful slides, either that or dizzying Prezi presentation.  This semester, I have my students working on one small group project. It is their job to present to the class, the content in one chapter of a dry, research-based text. They're encouraged to be creative and discouraged from using Powerpoint, and I quote directly from the project sheet:

"NO boring PowerPoints! Be creative."


Apparently, most of them interpreted this to mean they could use Powerpoint as long as it wasn't a boring one. I ask you, how many Powerpoint presentations have you seen that weren't boring? Yeah, that's what I thought. Tonight was the last of three nights of presentations, and I guess our class saved the best for last. The first group didn't even boot up the computer! They had a character, some humor, handheld cards with websites everyone could get more information on the idea they were speaking about. And they did a ton of outside research. They took the macro scale of the research and statistics in the book, and made it all tangible by applying it to things here locally. Everyone was laughing throughout their performance, and it was the most engaged I've seen the class throughout three nights and seven presentations. 

The other two things so notable about their presentation was how obvious it was they worked together on the whole presentation. They had to have gotten together at least a few times to put it altogether. It wasn't a Powerpoint where they each worked separately on slides and sent them all to one person to put it together. They had a script that fully integrated all their parts, and though they read from it quite a bit, it's not a theater class so I don't expect them to memorize all their lines. It truly presented as a collaborative project. The second thing, is they clearly practiced the time management aspect. The first night all the groups were running over so the remaining three nights we said we'd set a timer and we did. They were the only group who did not go over time, and after they told me they had practiced to make sure. WOW! Their presentation was great all around. Great content, great delivery, great group work. I felt proud.

Lesson learned for next semester: Change the wording in the syllabus to Absolutely no Powerpoint.



*P.S. While searching for the image, I found this article. I borrowed the image from the author.