Apple Macintosh launched their first home computer with spotlights and Also Sprach Zarathustra booming across the theatre. Across the screen of the tiny little beige box Macintosh Class scrolled a message written in the curliest and, at the time, most elegant typeface known to mankind: Zapf Chancery. For this in the world of PCs, exchange Zapf Chancery for any over-ornate, over-the-top font - preferably verging on the illegible, too. For the past 20 years educators have been amongst many PowerPoint sinners, using what they consider ‘wacky’, ‘fun’ or ‘clear’ fonts to make their bullet-pointed, overcrowded PowerPoint slides more accessible. How wrong could we have been?

In the 21st century more presentations in the business world are evolving around seven steps, eight evolutions or ten tips. There is one overriding reason for these talks going down well. If you are bored listening to the person you can see for yourself that there are only n more steps to go before the end – and a break. So could this work in the classroom?

Imagine what students think when you are going through your ‘concise’ explanation of the imperfect tense. Miss one stage of this and your days writing in the imperfect tense are numbered. If, however, the presentation was staged in numbered sequence with the proviso that each bit forms part of the explanation, the chances are you will get more attention for that little bit longer, allowing precious minutes to explain where the -ais comes from.

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