Making Presentations Pop: An Introduction to Visual Design

Actionable Innovations is a professional learning community where participants explore innovation in education. Every Friday, we meet to discuss trends in education and invite inspiring guests to join us and share their work. Parents, educators, students, and others interested in improving teaching and learning are always welcome.

Nobody wants to be a murderer — even if it’s just ‘death by PowerPoint’. This introduction to visual information design will help you make killer presentations that delight your audiences rather than leaving them dead. Featuring memorable, easy-to-use concepts and practices, it will offer practical strategies for making your GLOW Conference presentation — and all of your other presentations — more visually engaging, clearer, and more memorable.

Dr. William Rankin is a learning-experience and learning-frameworks designer and educational theorist who served as worldwide Director of Learning at Apple from 2013 through 2016. An academic with more than 25 years of classroom experience, Rankin helped design the world’s first iOS-based one-to-one learning program for higher education, for which he was named Campus Technology magazine’s Innovator of the Year for mobile learning in 2008. In 2009, he was named an Apple Distinguished Educator, and in 2010, he began a three-year tenure on the US Board of Apple’s Distinguished Educators program. Interviews with Rankin have appeared in Wired, The Guardian, The Times of London, Businessweek, The New York Times and The Chronicle for Higher Education and at online sites including InsideHigherEd, Ars Technica, and Open Culture. He has worked with schools, governments, and learning organizations in more than 30 countries to design, develop, and implement innovative learning and is an expert in mobile- and technology-enhanced learning and constructionism.