Creating Better Presentation Slides through Glance Media and Billboard Design

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

Through study and application of basic design principles, students learn how to make effective slides to accompany speeches and presentations.  This lesson introduces students to "glance media" theory and illustrates its concepts by looking at a series of billboards. Students then demonstrate their learning by creating slides to accompany an existing historical speech.

back to top

 

FEATURED RESOURCES

Learning Slide Design from Billboards Teachers Guide: Use this resource to help students understand how to create presentation slides for a "glance media" audience.

back to top

 

FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

The NCTE Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies states that the "[i]ntegration of multiple modes of communication and expression can enhance or transform the meaning of the work beyond illustration or decoration," an observation that takes on special meaning in the realm of producing slides to accompany presentations or speeches. Despite the fact that even "[f]rom an early age, students are very sophisticated readers and producers of multimodal work" they may not apply this sophistication to school-based assignments, resulting in PowerPoints that are too text-heavy or reliant on inappropriate images. This lesson provides students with a theoretical framework to help them "understand how [multimodal works such as presentation slides] make meaning, how they are based on conventions, and how they are created for and respond to specific communities or audiences."

Further Reading

NCTE Executive Committee. 2005. Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies. Web. November 2009. http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/multimodalliteracies.

 

Jester, Richard. "Learning with Technology: If I Had a Hammer: Technology in the Language Arts Classroom." English Journal 91.4 (March 2002): 85-88.

back to top