Yesterday, Heather in the comments said that it wasn’t possible to get away with 72pt text on a slide if you wanted to fit everything in. True, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Many PowerPoints lose their power because of the quantity of text and - sin of sins - copious bullet points which appear all at once. Microsoft, the creators of PowerPoint, even automatically reduce the text size as the text hungry presenter types in more and more. I’ve tried it just there. It keeps getting smaller until it’s down to 12 point. Just because a computer can doesn’t mean a teacher should.

Of course, to use such a large size of text on screen does require the teacher or student to put much less on at once. Using headlines, rather than sentences and typed out explanations, will actually have more of an effect - more lasting, certainly - than writing lengthy phrases that few students will bother themselves to read. It also prevents the presenter becoming a slide slave as they do this.

Using headlines means that small, punchy sentences highlight the main point being made. It liberates the teacher to explain in the way they want to, using the students’ reaction to shape each part of the presentation, and keeping what they teacher is saying - and not the slide - at the front of students’ minds.

Let’s take the example of a grammar-based lesson. If you’re explaining the past tense, for example, you probably use little catchphrases or headlines of your own. Yet, when we create a traditional presentation on this many teachers choose to use the inspiring “Past tense” or even “Verbs” (these came from you guys at the Communicate.06 conference as your all-time favourites

The problem with these headings is that they don’t differentiate between the different elements of the construction of the past tense.
What kind of headlines, not headings, could you use in a lesson today?
What works in trying to differentiate the content of each slide?

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