I had my first assessment on my course earlier on in the week, a 20 minute micro-teaching session. It went pretty well, but the thing I was really happy about was my slides presentation.
Having to avoid anything requiring specific hardware or software meant my available pool of subjects shrank dramatically. After plans for a practical 'nature of sound' session were dashed I settled on one of the few purely theory-based subjects I've taught: semiotics. This is a subject that (for the part I would be using at least) can be taught with just a PowerPoint. My existing slides were almost entirely text free except where unavoidable, and I'd used lots of simple imagery that were meant to serve more as a backdrop to discussion than a focal point.
I was aware the learner group would be vastly different to those I'd taught before, with different motives and life-directions to any of my previous students. The 20 minute cap also meant there was not the time to explore any topic in depth. Neither of these observations favoured the abstract, minimalist format of the existing slides. However the philosophical elements of several of the topics are far easier to 'get' if learners reach various conclusions themselves, hard to achieve under a more rigid structure.
I took some of my earlier thoughts and really went to town on the slides, trying to find a balance between abstraction and structure. I think the compromise I reached really strikes that balance, and based on the feedback I got I'm keen to integrate many of the key features back into my full length sessions. I'd imagine many of the other subjects I teach would benefit from the changes too.
Another dramatic shift from my 'usual way' came in my choice of presentation software. I decided against my usual PowerPoint and instead created the slideshow entirely in Google Slides. Researching good slide design practices led me to several examples built in Google's offering, so I decided 'why not?' I found a good template as my starting point and built up a (I think) modern, stylish and varied presentation. (As an aside, I finally answered a question I had occasionally pondered, that is: what will it take for me not to start with a template and instead build a fully-featured slideshow from scratch? The answer is: my own TED talk).
For me the most noticeable advantage to going the Google way has been that it's all in the cloud. Without having to install any software I edited the slides from at least 5 different computers (including my phone) and presented it from another. Just needed an Internet connection. Although it can't compare feature-wise to PowerPoint I found the limited functionality of Slides to actually be quite liberating. I did much less that relied on templating and went all designer-y, creating a bunch of new designs and really being ruthless about information density and variety of presentation. I may not have done that if I was concentrating on creating reusable templates.
The downsides are pretty much the same as the positives; Slides isn't as powerful as PowerPoint, by an extremely large margin. It's not even as advanced as the free version, which also has the advantage of being (sort of) cloud-based and ties in with the Office 365 subscription my workplace uses. It does integrate better with Google's other offerings though, and as a Drive subscriber, Android owner and Chrome user that makes it more convenient for me. It's collaboration tools are also the best I've seen, with authors able to work on a presentation at the same time. I can't deny though Microsoft really does seem to be creaming everyone else as far as features and integration goes and it's getting harder to find anything the competition does better, aside from not being Microsoft, of course.
Anyway, here's a link to the Google Slides presentation if you're interested.
Having to avoid anything requiring specific hardware or software meant my available pool of subjects shrank dramatically. After plans for a practical 'nature of sound' session were dashed I settled on one of the few purely theory-based subjects I've taught: semiotics. This is a subject that (for the part I would be using at least) can be taught with just a PowerPoint. My existing slides were almost entirely text free except where unavoidable, and I'd used lots of simple imagery that were meant to serve more as a backdrop to discussion than a focal point.
I was aware the learner group would be vastly different to those I'd taught before, with different motives and life-directions to any of my previous students. The 20 minute cap also meant there was not the time to explore any topic in depth. Neither of these observations favoured the abstract, minimalist format of the existing slides. However the philosophical elements of several of the topics are far easier to 'get' if learners reach various conclusions themselves, hard to achieve under a more rigid structure.
I took some of my earlier thoughts and really went to town on the slides, trying to find a balance between abstraction and structure. I think the compromise I reached really strikes that balance, and based on the feedback I got I'm keen to integrate many of the key features back into my full length sessions. I'd imagine many of the other subjects I teach would benefit from the changes too.
Another dramatic shift from my 'usual way' came in my choice of presentation software. I decided against my usual PowerPoint and instead created the slideshow entirely in Google Slides. Researching good slide design practices led me to several examples built in Google's offering, so I decided 'why not?' I found a good template as my starting point and built up a (I think) modern, stylish and varied presentation. (As an aside, I finally answered a question I had occasionally pondered, that is: what will it take for me not to start with a template and instead build a fully-featured slideshow from scratch? The answer is: my own TED talk).
For me the most noticeable advantage to going the Google way has been that it's all in the cloud. Without having to install any software I edited the slides from at least 5 different computers (including my phone) and presented it from another. Just needed an Internet connection. Although it can't compare feature-wise to PowerPoint I found the limited functionality of Slides to actually be quite liberating. I did much less that relied on templating and went all designer-y, creating a bunch of new designs and really being ruthless about information density and variety of presentation. I may not have done that if I was concentrating on creating reusable templates.
The downsides are pretty much the same as the positives; Slides isn't as powerful as PowerPoint, by an extremely large margin. It's not even as advanced as the free version, which also has the advantage of being (sort of) cloud-based and ties in with the Office 365 subscription my workplace uses. It does integrate better with Google's other offerings though, and as a Drive subscriber, Android owner and Chrome user that makes it more convenient for me. It's collaboration tools are also the best I've seen, with authors able to work on a presentation at the same time. I can't deny though Microsoft really does seem to be creaming everyone else as far as features and integration goes and it's getting harder to find anything the competition does better, aside from not being Microsoft, of course.
Anyway, here's a link to the Google Slides presentation if you're interested.
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