Powerpoints bombed China

It's also unfortunately true that those times the ppt machine has crapped out and I've had to roll up the screen and whip out the chalk, I've given lessons that feel more engaging. The chalk board gets the message across better, somehow.

BUT I CAN'T HELP MYSELF< I STILL LIKE MY POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONSDD!

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

I agree that the chalkboard is far more modular and responsive than a PPT. I can't recall ever making a PPT slide on the fly in the classroom, although I write little tips and hints on the board almost constantly.

A very good little trick i learned on my CELTA. Having a blank slide at the end of the ppt and while the students are doing the productive task shut off the screen and type up a few bits of vocabulary or phrases that came up during the lesson for a quick review at the end


I find ppts useful to present a lot of information quickly, the vocabulary or grammar that we are focussing on, and also to put instructions or pictures up for the lesson, building a whole class around them is hard to do though

PPTs are great tools. I almost never, ever use them. But like any tool, it's only as effective as the person who wields it.

As Tree mentioned, it's ideal for presenting lots of information quickly. When the g/f and have to do a business related demonstration, we would often use a PPT. I have yet to master all the cool effects and tricks available. I'm not geeky enough.

In class: whiteboard and coloured markers

I'm wondering about my own use of them. I assume they've gotten out of control if the text has to be smaller than 20pt. I also think one point, one page, and if you're flipping pages quickly, there's too much info. 15 pages maximum for a 45-minute presentation. But they're great for embedded video or big screen images that're meant to generate interpretive talk.

But among other things, just sitting around making the ppt works as lesson prep for me. It puts everything into a presentation order and I work out what I'm going to say. Thus and therefore, I suppose that's the inadequate part: I'm working out what *I* am going to say.


Pffft, freaking learning styles. I learn by working through information. Thus, presenting information and asking questions about it is how I teach. PPT = information.

Suggestion: the posts subsequent to the original post should be stripped off and sent to the Teacher Tips area. Every teacher can benefit from tips on using/building PPTs. Just a suggestion. 

Kitano - I absolutely love that idea! I'm going to start doing that tomorrow.

I am currently teaching 4 different subjects, so prepping a PPT is absolutely key for me because I can load it up 5 minutes before class starts and flip through the slides to mentally ready myself for the following 90 minutes - basically using it to remind myself what the goals of that particular time period happen to be.

If I had to give up PPTs I would most regret the ability to link strings of images together. There are so many great activities that one can do with only a series of images.

A very good little trick i learned on my CELTA. Having a blank slide at the end of the ppt and while the students are doing the productive task shut off the screen and type up a few bits of vocabulary or phrases that came up during the lesson for a quick review at the end

A good tip. I regularly keep a slide or two at the end for notes. But hide that last slide from the regular PPT, because "as everyone knows" students often like to ask the teacher for a copy of the PPT at the end of class. Same when I post my PPTs online for students to download.

Another tip: I like to put a blank slide at the beginning so when I connect my device to the classroom projector, the full first slide isn't displayed. I like to "lead-in" to the subject in my PPTs.

I've just started using ppt for a part time gig, and have very mixed feelings about it. I've avoided using it for years, because for as long as I've known of its existence, ppt has been synonimous with bad teaching/presentation skills. The article cited just tells me what I've known all along. But it is the expected thing, and merely being competent with chalk and whiteboard markers and a sense of what do I want to give them, when, in what spatial arrangement is no longer a desireable skill set. So I'm getting into it.

CP, I'm finding something similar. For me, putting the ppt together is a lot like reviewing basic lesson planning. I've been using word documents for my lesson plans for years now, and I'm finding that my actual lesson plan gets less than half completed before my ppt becomes the lesson plan. So come class time, I open both. where Kit uses a blank slide at the end of the ppt, I have my lesson plan, open to the vocab list. This part can be added to during a class, just the way I used to during the good old days of chalk and board.

True story: In 2003 I was working at one of the top universities when they built a huge new campus and, the Foreign Language School building was the first to open...Without any blackboards or whiteboards. All 100+ classrooms were designed to be run from the elaborate AV system they installed in each classroom. The blackboard? Open a Word document and type in what you wanted displayed. I was semi-compfortable with that, but the Chinese teachers at first were irate.

After a few weeks, everyone was on board. And I really liked it, too. I could close out the class by saving the Word doc. to my USB and I had a record of what happened in the class. Pre-that, I would sometimes take photos of my blackboard after a particularly good lesson, just to record what I had done.

I spent the following summer converting those Word docs from classes into PPTs and never looked back.

In 2008 I switched to Mac which made it even easier. (But I digress.)

A Word to PPT workflow is easy-peasy once you get used to it.

I used to hate PPTs and I still refuse to use them in Lit class. However, in Culture/History classes they are amazing. I have one rule: Little to no text on slides. Unless they are diagrams. For instance, today I taught British History. It is easier to continue my lecture about vikings and shield-walls when I can press a button and present the students with a picture of both.

In the past, when I were an English teacher, or anyway when I led English majors in language activity classes, and had no need of nor, often, any access to, ppt technology, what I knew of the device was what students would report sometimes when they had some higher faluting foreign lecturer than just the oral English dude. I would ask if they understood the foreigner, and they'd so no, but we could read the ppt. Thus, ppts seemed like (a) a way for students to not practice much English, but (b) a decent way to get class info across.

Well, that was then. These days, if the students ever did learn how to take notes, they've forgone them in favour of a phone picture of the ppt screen. That, I think, is what's getting me concerned about ppts. The ppts might end up being useful only if you can get the student to interact with the photo they took of your screen.

Which is... okay, I guess.

In the past, when I were an English teacher, or anyway when I led English majors in language activity classes, and had no need of nor, often, any access to, ppt technology, what I knew of the device was what students would report sometimes when they had some higher faluting foreign lecturer than just the oral English dude. I would ask if they understood the foreigner, and they'd so no, but we could read the ppt. Thus, ppts seemed like (a) a way for students to not practice much English, but (b) a decent way to get class info across.

Well, that was then. These days, if the students ever did learn how to take notes, they've forgone them in favour of a phone picture of the ppt screen. That, I think, is what's getting me concerned about ppts. The ppts might end up being useful only if you can get the student to interact with the photo they took of your screen.

Which is... okay, I guess.

I think that's straying into a separate issue a bit

I'm not very au fait with smartphones (i had one and wechat was the only 'smart' thing that I used, battery was rubbish and screen is too small to be useful imo) but I think the way that students here in China rely on them is often counter productive. Like with all phone pictures, people don't seem to look at them again, if it's a file they can read on a computer or OMG actual notes written with a biro, there is at least some involvement

Much agreed Kitano. IMO if they take the time to write it out with their hand at least they review it once. I keep a stack of paper and pens in my bag for just this purpose.

If they just take a picture it is easy to "write it off" as they can think they have it covered, when in reality they have only justified the information away.

Back on topic though, I tried out the blank slide at the end of the PPT technique today. The 5 minute break between periods is ideal for hammering out some quick review notes. Cheers!