I created this presentation to demonstrate to our students that slides don’t need bullet points or templates or clipart. Peter Norvig’s wonderfully awful Gettysburg Address PowerPoint inspired this idea.

After sharing Norvig’s slides with our students, I wondered how it would have looked if Lincoln had better slide skills.

In this activity I am demonstrating several ideas:

1. 1.That we can break the rules of presentation software.  For instance, just because slide design options appear, doesn’t mean you have to use them.
   

2. 2.That you can use your voice dramatically, as a tool.
   

3. 3.That you shouldn’t be afraid to use such rhetorical devices as refrain or repetition or parallelisms.
   

4. 4.That Copyright Friendly image portals can lead you to some (millions of) pretty cool images.
   

5. 5.That you CAN present without templates, and bullets, and clipart.
   

This project follows up on some of the frustrations I shared in a blog post PowerPoint Reform: A First Chapter.  It incorporates the resources collected in our PowerPoint Reform Wiki.

Of course, the Gettysburg Address lives as an example of powerful and inspiring oratory.  It was not meant as a business or academic presentation.  But what if we asked students to put a just a little bit oration in their presentations?

I am hoping that we might recreate some other great speeches in an effort to enhance students’ presentation and speech techniques.