Sunday, June 15, 2008

Cognitive Load Theory

The tenents of CLT need to be shared with staff, young and old. This will assure that all are aware of the need to take an audience into consideration when making presentations to an audience of any type.
I think that the presentation that I will use is one where slides are shown as a before and after. Download a few slide shows from google or slideshare and edit them through the CLT lens. By showing the differences after making changes to fall in line with the ideas of CLT, perhaps some will see the differences and adjust their presentations accordingly. Technology used in education to present information, to adults and kids alike, need to be ulilitarian. In other words, if there is no need to have the fly-in, the graphic or the fancy background, then do not include it; especially if the pretty takes away from the meaning of the slide. The graphics in a presentation is not the reason for the presentation; the content of it is the reason.

1 comment:

Demetri said...

great idea to show your learners some before & after slides! As with all lessons, it's good to focus on the objectives... e.g. what is the objective of a lesson in which students are creating PowerPoints? Is it that they display correct content, or is it that the PowerPoint contributes to the impact of their oral presentation? For whatever the objective is, how might it be measured? and perhaps that measurement could demonstrate the importance of designing through a CLT lens? Might be an interesting research study for kids to divide them into two groups and let one go wild with bells & whistles, and give the other group a working knowledge of CLT (on their level) and have both groups create & present and see which audience had a greater retention rate and recall of the knowledge.