presentations

Cutting out “empty words”: Presentations this week in class

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

This week, my students are preparing their 12-slide presentation for a project titled, “The Future is Now.”

This is the culmination of a research project and a 3-page report based on Google’s Moonshot program. But it’s not just about creating the content and formatting the slides. I tell my students that they happen to be in “a communications class that pretends to be a computer class”. This week they are watching a TED talk by a 12-year old. But there is another student worth watching this week, Greta Thunberg,  the 16-year old activist from Sweden.

She railed against the grown-ups in the room, for stealing this generation’s childhood with their “empty words.” Speaking of Feedback loops, risks, and tipping points, her emotionally-charged speech warned that “change is coming, whether you like it or not.”

UN Envoy, Sri Lankan, Jayathma Wickramanayake, called climate change “the defining issue of our time. Millions of young people all over the world are already being affected by it.”

Weary of PowerPoint? Fire your imagination with Prezi

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

Sure, there are great templates for PowerPoint. But quite frankly I do better when explaining myself on the back of a napkin –with a little help from the book by the same name.

But this week I’ve started teaching myself a great new application for presentations, called Prezi.

Naturally my first one is for Public Radius. Take a first look

Here’s why I love Prezi:

  1. It lets you control the focal points and flow of the presentation -by tilting words, zooming in on words and images etc.
  2. Once you figure out how the striped control icon (the ‘transformation zebra’) works, you could add elements and move them around as you would when brainstorming on a scratch pad
  3. Because you can move laterally or diagonally, you could adjust your story line on the fly as new ideas emerge.
  4. It’s easy to embed other digital content –video, audio etc –something I will get to in the next phase
  5. The best part is your presentation on this platform is designed to be connected to other social media venues. Which is exactly what Public Radius is all about–connecting the dots!