BARRIE OLSON& MIKE SOBIECHFALL 2011 COMPOSITION ORIENTATION

AUGUST 19 , 2011

Building a Better PowerPoint Presentation

In case you are unfamiliar with bad PPTs…

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?hp

In case you are unfamiliar with bad PPTs…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpvgfmEU2Ck

Good PPTs require attention to three qualities.

Style

Typography

Layout

For every slide but the title slide, use a sentence headline.

The headline states the slide’s main assertion.

The body of the slide should present supporting evidence in a visual way.

What will you remember more from this presentation?

That slide bodies should have visuals or that our presentation included a dancing leprechaun?

The font you choose matters.

Some fonts are very hard to read.

Some fonts are obnoxious.

Bold sans serif fonts such as Arial are the easiest to read.

According to Alley et al, size does matter.

Use 28 point font for headlines.

Use 18-24 point font for the body text.

Larger type is appropriate for the title of the title slide.

ALL CAPS MAKES YOU SEEM LIKE YOU ARE YELLING.

If yelling is what you are going for, use five exclamation points instead. The effect is the

same but it is easier to read!!!!!

Keep blocks of text, especially sentence headlines, to one or two lines.

It’s a PowerPoint presentation, not Ulysses*.

* Which, in case you did not know, has the English language’s longest sentence (12,931 wordst).

T This number comes from Wikipedia… a discussion on whether or not that is a reliable source will be saved for another day.

Keep bulleted lists to no more than three items.

IMeanReally…DoYou WantToReadA

Student PowerPointThat LooksLikeThis?They

Don’tWant ToEither.

Whenever possible, avoid bulleted lists altogether.

59%

77%

Don’t believe us? Read the study yourself.

Alley, M., Schreiber, M., & Muffo, J. (2005). Pilot testing of a new design for presentation slides to teach science and engineering. Proceedings 35th Annual Conference: Frontiers in Education. Indianapolis, IN: IEEE.

How might your students use PPT?

Paired presentation

Peer review

Rough draft

An example from a 102 class taught by Joanna

Comparing and Contrasting Three Different Genres:

• Peer-review Articles• Radio and Television Broadcasts

• News Articles

Radio and television broadcasts tend to have more authors than peer-reviewed

articles and news paper articles.

Genre Average number of Authors

Peer-Reviewed Articles 1.7

News Articles 1.3

Radio and Television Broadcasts 7

Newspapers have more challenging words than Radio and TV broadcasts.

News Papers

Radio and Television Broadcasts

Average Percentage of Hard Words

Average Percentage of Hard Words

However, radio tends to contain more hard words than TV broadcasts.

CNN News

NPR News

8.7 8.8 8.9 9 9.1 9.2

Average percentage of Hard Words

Average percentage of Hard Words

Peer-Review Articles usually follow the IMRaD genre, beginning with an abstract, followed by an introduction, methods section,

results, and then the conclusion.

Abstract

Introduction

Methods Results Conclus

ion

In contrast, news articles tend to have an informative genre, starting with introducing the topic, then providing background information, discussing the topic, and coming to a conclusion.

Introduce the topic

Provide

background

information

Discuss Topic

Conclusion

The average reading level of peer-reviewed articles is higher than news articles.

Genre Average Reading Level (in years)

News Paper 18

Peer-review Article 25

Peer-review articles use transitions such as “while”, “first”, “further” and “future” and have a more formal tone.

While it is tempting to try to use our results to calibrate the total volume of trafficking in cultural objects into the United States and worldwide, it is not possible to generate any meaningful measure based on our analyses. First, the ‘trade gap’ between reported imports and � �reported exports is generally positive for all goods – we are interested �in the correlates of this gap rather than the level of the gap itself. Further, if we wish to use our regression results for such calculations, the numbers we produce will be highly sensitive to our assumptions of the extent of trafficking from very low corruption source countries. Given that our results are expressed in terms of elasticities, any change in this assumption will naturally generate a proportionate increase in our final measure of the total level of trafficking. We will leave this type of exercise for future work.

However, news articles use less transitions and have a more narrative tone using

pronouns such as “he”.

As this suggests the book is, at least in part, an apologia for his activities, for which he was sentenced to six years in prison. He also displays a certain paranoia about what he calls "the cultural heritage crusade", a conspiracy that he suggests means points of view like his are rarely heard. But it is about something more: Tokeley, like the big US museums, utterly rejects the Renfrew argument that collectors are the problem. If anything, he argues that the market is the best way to preserve antiquities . The crux of his argument is that poor farmers should be allowed to keep finds on their land, the government should step in to prevent external looting, the farmers should be able to sell on the open market (giving the state first refusal) and that all but the most important pieces can then be sold at international rates, earning much-needed hard currency. At the moment the Egyptian state claims antiquities , meaning many go unreported.

How might I use PPT in my teaching?

http://www.fno.org/sept00/powerpoints.html

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/647

http://www.fno.org/sept00/powerpoints.html

Efiles

The Quotation Hamburger!

by Kristen Miller 11.11.10

Introduce quotation.

Quote.Explain quotation.

Introduce quotation.

who

Introduce the quotation.

The introductory or lead-in claims should:

1. Explain who is speaking.

2. Set up what the quotation says.

who

Helpful templates for introducing a

quotation.

- X himself writes, “___.”

- According to X, “___.”

- As the prominent philosopher X puts it, “___.”

- In her book, ___, X maintains that, “___.”

- X agrees when she writes, “___.”

- X complicates matters further when he writes, “___.”

Quote.

1. Does this quotation repeat some of the information from the introduction?

2. Does it contain lengthy explanation or background information that would be better summarized by me?

The Quotation: Make sure it's meaty.

Each quotation should achievemaximum effect in minimum space. So, before inserting a quotation, ask yourself:

1. Contains exciting language!

2. Exemplifies the very heart of the source-author's argument!

The Quotation: Make sure it's meaty.

Besides simply avoiding repetitive information, choose a quotation that:

Explain quotation.

Explain the quotation.

The statements following a quotation should:

1. Summarize what you take the quotation to say.

2. Explain why you considerthe quotation to be important.

Helpful templates forexplaining a quotation.

- In other words, X believes ___.

- X's point is that ___.

- The essence of X's argument is that ___.

- X is corroborating the notion that ___.

- In making this comment, X urges us to ___.

Activity!

Which of the Quotation Burger components arerepresented in the following examples?

“Fiji is just one example.Until television was intro-duced in 1995, the islands had no reported cases of eating disorders. In 1998,three years after programsfrom the U.S. and Britainbegan broadcasting there,62 percent of girls surveyedreported dieting,” accordingto Susan Bordo.

Another point Bordo makes is that...

Feminist philosopher Susan Bordo makes an example of Fijiin her argument that the media pressures young women to diet.“Until television was introducedin 1995,” she says, “the islandshad no reported cases of eatingdisorders. In 1998, three yearsafter programs from the U.S. andBritain began broadcasting there,62 percent of the girls surveyedreported dieting.”

I think Bordo is right. Another point Bordo makes is that...

“Until television was introducedin Fiji in 1995, the islands had no reported cases of eating dis-orders. In 1998, three years after programs from the U.S. And Britain began broadcasting there,62 percent of the girls surveyedreported dieting.” Susan Bordo, who makes this statement, believes that Western media is at fault for leading women around the globe to see themselves as fat and in need of a diet. Ultimately, Bordo complains, the culture of dieting will find you, regardless of where you live.

Feminist philosopher Susan Bordo argues that because of Western media's obsession with female thinness and dieting women all over the world are being led to diet. Citing Fiji as a case in point, Bordo notes that “Until television was introduced in 1995, the islands had no reported cases of eating dis-orders. In 1998, three years after programs from the U.S. And Britain began broadcasting there,62 percent of the girls surveyedreported dieting.” Bordo's point is that the Western cult of diet-ing is spreading even to remote places across the globe, affecting increasing numbers of women.

Examples and Templates from:

Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say / I Say: the Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New

York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/call-me-cassandra/death-by-powerpoint