about this blog

I suppose the motivation behind this blog is an ongoing interest in the use of PowerPoint and, particularly, an interest in showing that this veteran program still has much to offer. Despite the competition from relative newcomers like SlideRocket and Prezi, not to mention a whole raft of other online pretenders to the presentation throne, the old stager still puts up a pretty good fight. In fact, I would go as far as to say that PowerPoint has a depth of capability and ease of use that keeps it some way ahead of the rest. Anything Microsoft may be deeply unfashionable, but that doesn’t make it bad.

What makes people think PowerPoint is bad (Power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely, and all that) is the fact that the vast majority of the PowerPoint presentations they have seen are bad. Too much text, too many bullet points, poor layout, misuse of animation, you know the score. Well used, PowerPoint can be absolutely dazzling – just see what people like Eyeful can do with it, if you don’t believe me.

For a humorous view of what we all know as death by PowerPoint, there is always the classic Don McMillan sketch.

And for some really good practical advice about what works, I like this presentation.

I don’t make any claims to be a skilled author in PowerPoint, but – having gone through the I hate PowerPoint phase some years ago – I have a lot of respect for what it can do. I made use of it during my sabbatical term a couple of years ago, using it to author slide shows on German grammar which I then converted to Flash for use on my ten things german website.

The handful of presentations on this blog aren’t particularly good, most of them having been slung together quickly the night before a lesson, but I am hoping just the fact of having the blog will force me into getting my act together and producing some more and better examples for teaching French.

The embeds here are Flash conversions done with i-Spring, but there are links to the original PowerPoints, which can be saved, edited and re-used, if anyone feels so inclined.

It’s worth noting that many of the presentations have quite a few timings built in, so don’t need to be clicked too much. If viewing the embed, click when the little bar at the bottom stops!

If you know of any really impressive uses of PowerPoint for teaching secondary French, do let me know!