I was browsing Slideshare, as I am wont to do, and came across this excellent new presentation by Kevin Gee. It’s actually a slidecast, which means it includes his audio narration.

The Science of Presentation summarizes cognitive and educational psychology research as it applies to presentations. Kevin begins by explaining how our intuition does not always lead us to correct principles. This is so true! I frequently repeat that bad presentation design is not really the presenter’s fault. They just do what the software and social norms dictate.

Kevin proceeds with 3 main topics:

1. Summary of Cognitive Theory

3. Application

In the third section, Kevin does a great job of taking a poorly designed slide and transforming it into a few slides that are designed with the brain in mind.

My favorite part about the presentation: Kevin practices what he preaches. The whole presentation is well designed and does not distract from his narration.

(Via Slideshare.)

I used the slides below for a presentation I gave to an advanced writing course this past September. It was created in Keynote and I presented it using the Pointer app for the iPhone as the clicker.

It won’t make much sense to you by looking at the slides alone, because these slides were simply a visual enhancement to what I was saying as the presenter. This is an important concept to remember when designing your own presentations: the students should pay attention to you, the teacher, and should only refer to your slides when you want them to.

I am working on a stand-alone presentation for Slideshare that will introduce Brain Slides without the need for my explanations as you click through the slides. I will post it soon!