Presentations in Art and Design - Nicola Gardiner

Introduction and context
When I started this work all the resources in my department for introducing new art topics and for teaching Art History are either book based or using photographic slides. The use of these resources is very restrictive for the following reasons:

• Books can only be seen by one student or a small group at a time
• The slides can only be used by one teacher at a time and presentation must be teacher led
• The resource cannot be easily made available after the lesson in order for students to do follow up research
• The resources are not interactive
• The projection equipment is heavy and unreliable and the slides are very old and or poor quality

Proposal
The use of PowerPoint presentations in this context has a number of advantages:

• The presentations can be made available across the college intranet so that they can be available to all teachers and students to use at their convenience
• Digital presentations are easier to navigate making it possible, for example through the use of hyperlinks, to return to particular slides and then back to wherever using a digital index
• Explanatory annotation can be added to each slide as well as guidance relating to accompanying assignments
• Each slideshow related to a particular topic or area of study can be printed off in handout form to further aid students’ learning and provide an additional resource
• Students can be encouraged to develop their own research using the same techniques in order to further their own understanding and perhaps as a means of sharing research with others