Random Power Point Challenge

Every Thursday morning I have an extra before-school class that all interested students are welcome to attend. The class focuses on public speaking and the Thursday morning lesson begins at seven o’clock, which is why we have started referring to it as ‘public sleeping’.

Last week I thought about getting students to give 10-slide Power Point presentations, but wanted to make it both challenging and enjoyable.

The resulting idea is the Random Power Point Challenge: that awkward moment when you are giving a presentation but have no idea what is on any of the slides.

Procedure:

1. Put together several Power Point presentations.

Although each presentation should have a title and a theme, the content of each slide should be gloriously random and totally unpredictable.

The four presentations that I made were called

Noticing trees more effectively – a beginner’s guide

Surviving high school – probably

Am I racist?

No way, DJ! – thaaaaaat’s right, dawg

2. Get the students into pairs or groups. Then tell them the title of the talk they are going to give. They cannot see the slides, of course. Let them have a few minutes to discuss what the key message of their presentation is going to be.

Point out that good speakers can sometimes ‘bend’ input to make it reflect their own agenda, the same way that we have all seen politicians twist questions around before answering quite a different question altogether.

3. Load the Power Point presentation. Introduce the speakers as experts in their field, and explain that they are going to give a fascinating, thought-provoking and motivating talk.

The students can come out to the front of the class to begin their talk. It is ‘their’ presentation, of course, even though they have never seen it before, so the students get to decide what to say about each slide, how much to say and when to click on to the next slide.

4. At the end of the presentation, invite questions from the audience.

One of the slides from the ‘Am I racist?’ presentation

A deliberately bizarre slide from the ‘Am I racist?’ presentation

Review

Let’s be honest: this is a desperately difficult task, perhaps even the kind of thing that would be difficult to do well in the native language.

So how did it go? Actually, it was a huge success. The students really enjoyed it, and – though I say it myself – did an excellent job.

Why does this activity work well with gifted students?

I think the fact that the content of each presentation is essentially nonsense takes the pressure off students. Of course they are going to be tongue-tied. Who wouldn’t be?

With practice, however, they find their feet, and sometimes come up with brilliant things to say. It would appear that the juxtaposition of incongruous elements on a slide can trigger a gestalt phenomenon – in other words, when suddenly asked to make a link between Yoda and dancing your brain works feverishly to complete the task, often with remarkable success.

A slide from the ‘Noticing trees more effectively’ presentation

Quick-witted speaker improvises a tree-themed tomato-soup ninja story…

After the lesson the students said that we should definitely have more Random Power Point lessons in the future. And I agree. Only next time, guess who’s going to be writing the Power Points before the lesson?

That’s right – the students.

3 thoughts on “Random Power Point Challenge

  1. Andrew

    Hi Edmund, I really like the sound of this activity. Could you post the slides of one of the presentations? And how much text do you use for the slides? Is it totally random text, or is it fairly “on topic”? Thanks.

    Reply
  2. Pingback: Random Power Point Presentations : Ed in the crowds

  3. Edmund Dudley Post author

    Hi Andrew. Thanks for your comments. I’ve just posted an updated entry about this activity, along with some presentations for you to download. Hope they are useful!
    Ed

    Reply

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