Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

Here are my slides from my eTech talk.

You see 326 thumbnails, but one slide was blank.  I displayed the blank while I explained a new section.  That leaves 325 slides with content.  Some of those slides have multiple animations triggered by a mouse click and so the presentation appears to have even more slides.

Why so many?  I want a consistent message during my presentation.  I don’t show a slide that takes more than a few seconds to explain.  During practice I can get each slide down to a few very specific words.  This makes my total presentation time much more consistent which is important at a conference or during a classroom presentation.

Think of each slide as a cue for your message.  The more cues you have, the less likely you are to leave something out.  The longer you loiter on each slide, the higher the probability of leaving a minor point out of the monologue.  You also have a greater chance of having your delivery time fluctuate.

Some topics require more slides.  I don’t leave PowerPoint to demonstrate an external program.  Instead I do screen captures of the external program and put them into the presentation.  To give the “look and feel” of using that external program, many slides may be required.  The bonus during the presentation is that the overall timing won’t be effected by a program that takes a while to start or function properly.

I had over 100 screen shots that I incorporated in my eTech talk.  I blazed through those very fast.  I also didn’t leave PowerPoint to show items on the Internet.  I captured those web pages as well.  During a presentation (especially at a conference), you never know if the Internet is going to work, or if the bandwidth is going to be adequate.  Doing the captures ahead of time will keep the delivery time under control.

Take a look at my Google Search Tips presentation.  It’s about eight minutes and has 38 slides.  That’s a pace of a little more than 200 slides an hour.  That’s actually a nice relaxed pace.

When I have my freshmen do their final presentations, each is limited to three to five minutes.  I have a sample presentation that I give.  It’s 52 slides and takes four minutes.  I can do the presentation ten times and every time be at 4 minutes plus or minus ten seconds.  More importantly, everyone remembers the content.

You should play around with different numbers of slides to figure out your own pace.  Split the complicated material into several simple slides.  In the end, your presentation will be better and easier to deliver.

I have had a lot of positive feedback from people that attended my session yesterday.  Here is one question I have asked those that attended.

How many of the pictures in the attributions section could you relate back to the topics?

Ideally, the right image and message can stick in your memory better than text alone.  It’s called stickiness.  It’s one reason pictures are so important in a presentation.

In case you missed it, here is slide six again.

I wish more people did this, but I can’t seem to make it happen on my own.  For the last three years I have saved all my links for my talk at the eTech Ohio conference using a del.icio.us tag of eTechOhio06, eTechOhio07, eTechOhio08, respectively.  By doing this, I can give one URL during my talk, and all the attendees can access all my links from that one URL.  Here is the link from today’s talk:

http://del.icio.us/atrusty/eTechOhio08

I started my presentation with the links.  I had four pages of links (about 60 total). I flipped through in less than ten seconds.  That was followed by slide six with one URL that will go to a page listing all 60 links.

During a talk, it seems like such a waste of time to stop and let everyone write down all the URLs.  Chances are, many will write down the wrong addresses, especially if the links are long.  One top of that, writing links onto a piece of paper more than doubles the work.  You have to go back to your computer and type them in manually.  In a month, when you have a situation requiring one of those links, you won’t have that piece of paper with you.

By placing all the links into del.icio.us, I have assured that none of the links will be misspelled and no one will have to manually type any of them into a browser.  Go to my list and click on the link you want.  It’s just that simple.

I am putting the final touches on my presentation for the eTech Ohio 2008 conference.  I have more than 300 hundred slides and only 45 minutes to present.  Timing is critical.  To get ready I have been practicing using my iPod Touch.

PowerPoint has a “Save As” option that permits slides to be saved as JPG files.  Each slide is saved as a separate file called SLIDE#.JPG where # is the slide number.  I imported the pictures into my iPod Touch.  Using the normal scrolling action, I can go through the slides on the iPod any time I have a few spare minutes.

I did have one little hiccup in the process.  SLIDE1.JPG was followed by SLIDE10.JPG which was followed by SLIDE100.JPG.  I solved the problem using my favorite renaming tool – Flexible Renamer.  I told it to add “00” to the first ten slides making SLIDE1.JPG into SLIDE001.JPG, etc.  After that I added one zero to slides 10 through 99.  All the file names after 99 were OK as they were.  Renaming this way took a few seconds and arranged all the slides in the proper order on my iPod Touch.