Why Less is More

I have attended my share of professional development sessions and teacher trainings over the twelve years I have taught.  Many, if not all, of these sessions or trainings have had a presenter using some form of presentation to assist in their speech.  During the first half of my career, most of these presentations were created with PowerPoint. Powerpoint does not have a limit on the amount of text per slide. This can create a presentation referred to as "death by PowerPoint".   I remember one training where the speaker used a PowerPoint presentation that had so much text on each slide it caused the type to be tiny and nothing could be read by the audience.  To make matters worse, he attempted to read each of the slides.  You can only imagine the excitement of the audience.  As a contrast, I attended a session this year where the speaker used a presentation during the session as support.  He simply told us what he wanted us to remember.  The presentation had very little text, but was full of images that substantiated what he was revealing to us. Needless to say, this training held my attention.  

When we create a new presentation, we need to ask ourselves the following, "What is the purpose of the...presentation and, in turn what is the purpose of any particular slide in that presentation" (Hicks, 2013, p. 66)? If the purpose is to bore the audience, then by all means, use lots of text, small font size, and boring clip art.  If the purpose is to tell a story, then the presenter must utilize text and font that appeals to the eye and many real-life images.  As educators, we must teach our students to use digital presentations as a method of storytelling instead of simply restating information they have researched.  A powerful way to show our students the correct way to use digital presentations is by example.  When our presentations in the classroom are full of text, students tend to copy that same format.  While we want our students to have the correct format, we also want them to have creativity.  According to Hicks (2013), "We want to offer our students guidance, but we do not want to confine them to a particular set of rules that can destroy creativity" (p. 67).

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A wonderful program to show students how to create superior digital presentations is TED talks.  Carmine Gallio is a former news reporter for CNN and CBS.  He is a regular contributor for TED talks, and best selling author, but is probably best known for his workshops on how to improve communication skills.  His website contains numerous training tips and videos we can use to help improve our communication skills.  Gallio offers the idea that "our brains are wired to process visual information such as pictures very differently than text and sound" (2014).  He also suggests we do not completely eliminate text, but we need to use images and photos as much as possible (2014).  With this in mind, it makes sense why adults enjoy presentations from speakers who utilize more images than text.  As an educator, my goal is to teach students to start creating presentations with more images and less text which will allow them to grow their presentations to superior level presentations.  

Gallo, Carmine. (2014). Avoid the PowerPoint trap by having less wordy slides. Entrepreneur Business Public Speaking. Retrieved October 11, 2016. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/232217

Hicks, Troy (2013). Crafting digital writing: Composing texts across media and genres. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.