{"course":{"slug":"ai-for-teachers","title":"AI for Teachers","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers","level":"beginner","track":"work"},"lesson":{"slug":"slides-and-the-projector-you-sometimes-have","title":"Slides, and the projector you sometimes have","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/slides-and-the-projector-you-sometimes-have","position":23,"of":57,"minutes":8,"answer":"Generate the outline and the speaker notes, not the slides: a deck built from a generated outline in Google Slides or LibreOffice Impress carries your structure, prints as a handout when the projector fails.","keyIdea":"Generate the outline and the speaker notes, not the slides: a deck built from a generated outline in Google Slides or LibreOffice Impress carries your structure, prints as a handout when the projector fails, and avoids the pretty, empty deck that slide generators produce by default."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## What the slide generators are for\n\nSeveral tools now turn a prompt into a finished slide deck: Gamma, Canva's AI presentation feature, Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint, Gemini in Google Slides. They are impressive for thirty seconds. Then you read the slides.\n\nThey are built for business pitches, where a slide is a backdrop for a speaker. The default is a heading, an image, a line of text. For a class of forty, half of whom are copying from the board, that is close to useless. And the check question describes the second failure: the day the projector does not work, and the deck cannot be printed as anything a student could learn from.\n\n## Generate the substance, not the slides\n\nReverse the order. Have the model produce the thing that matters, the structure and the words, and let the slide tool do the layout.\n\n```text\nOutline a 40-minute lesson on the causes of the 1857 uprising for Class 8, as 10 slides.\nFor each slide give: a title of at most 6 words, three bullet points of at most 12 words each, and 80 to 120 words of speaker notes in plain prose that say what I will explain while this slide is up.\nSlide 1 is a question students can answer from last lesson. Slide 10 is one question that checks whether the lesson landed.\nPlain text, no markdown.\n```\n\nNow you have a script. The speaker notes are the lesson; the bullets are the prompts. Paste the outline into Google Slides, LibreOffice Impress or PowerPoint (ten slides takes ten minutes) and put the speaker notes in the notes field, which is where they belong.\n\nWhen the projector fails, print the notes pages. Every slide's bullets and its notes, on paper, is a handout that stands on its own. That is the whole reason to build it this way.\n\n## Free layouts\n\nGoogle Slides is free with a Google account and has templates that are adequate. LibreOffice Impress is free, runs offline on any laptop, and opens and saves PowerPoint files. Canva's free tier has better templates than either and exports to PowerPoint. None of these need the AI features to be useful; the AI produced the outline, and a template supplies the look.\n\nIf your school gives you Gemini in Slides or Copilot in PowerPoint, they can generate slides from your outline inside the tool, and the result is better than the generic generators because you supplied the substance. Check that they did not shorten your bullets to look tidy.\n\n## What goes on a slide for a class\n\nA few rules the generators do not know, and you do:\n\n- **A slide students copy from needs the words, not a picture.** If they will write it down, it goes on the slide in full. If they will not, it goes in your notes.\n- **One idea per slide, and the idea in the title.** \"Causes: economic\" is a label. \"Land tax rose 40% in ten years\" is an idea.\n- **Fewer slides, more time on each.** Ten slides for forty minutes. Twenty-five for forty minutes is a lecture nobody follows.\n- **The last slide is the check.** One question. Answers on paper, collected. The generator will end on \"Thank you\" or \"Any questions?\", which is a slide with no purpose.\n\n## Images on slides\n\nThe previous lesson applies: real photographs from Wikimedia Commons for real things, generated illustrations for scenes, and no generated diagrams. A slide with a wrong diagram is a wrong diagram at two metres wide.\n\n## Slides for a phone\n\nSome teachers project from a phone, or hand a phone round a group. Slides built for a large screen are unreadable at 15 centimetres. If the phone is your projector, use a larger font, four lines maximum, and treat the deck as a set of flashcards. The outline prompt above works with \"for viewing on a phone screen\" added.\n\n## The honest limit\n\nA slide deck, however well built, is a lesson delivered from the front, and the model's outlines lean that way: explanation, then example, then a question. The parts of a lesson where students do something are the parts the outline under-produces, because they are not slides. Add them yourself, as a blank slide that says \"Do question 4 now\", so the deck's timing carries the activity and you are not tempted to talk through the gap."},"check":{"question":"A teacher uses a slide generator and gets a polished twelve-slide deck. In class the projector fails, and she finds the slides are unusable as a handout because each has a heading, a stock image and one line of text. What did the tool optimise for, and what should she have generated instead?","options":[{"text":"The tool optimised for brevity, which is good presentation practice, and the only real problem on the day was the projector failing.","correct":false,"tempting":"Brevity on a slide is fine when the substance lives elsewhere; here there was no elsewhere, which is the real failure, and the projector only exposed it."},{"text":"The tool optimised for speed and produced a first draft that she should have expanded by adding more text to every slide.","correct":false,"tempting":"More text per slide makes a worse presentation and only a slightly better handout; the fix is separating the substance into notes, not crowding the slides."},{"text":"It optimised for looks, as slide generators do; she should have generated an outline with speaker notes and built from that.","correct":true},{"text":"Slide generators are built for business and cannot produce educational content, so she should not have used one for a lesson at all.","correct":false,"tempting":"They can produce usable content given a strong outline; the failure was letting the generator decide the substance as well as the look."}]},"prev":{"slug":"diagrams-and-visuals-without-a-designer","title":"Diagrams and visuals without a designer","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/diagrams-and-visuals-without-a-designer"},"next":{"slug":"revision-flashcards-and-spaced-practice","title":"Revision: flashcards and spaced practice","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/revision-flashcards-and-spaced-practice"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'Slides, and the projector you sometimes have', in AI for Teachers. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/slides-and-the-projector-you-sometimes-have (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"Slides, and the projector you sometimes have","courseTitle":"AI for Teachers","module":{"index":3,"slug":"planning-and-materials","title":"Planning and making materials"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"Generate the outline and the speaker notes, not the slides: a deck built from a generated outline in Google Slides or LibreOffice Impress carries your structure, prints as a handout when the projector fails, and avoids the pretty, empty deck that slide generators produce by default.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":"https://addaly.com/art/modules/ai-for-teachers/planning-and-materials.webp","alt":"A school staff room: a long table with stacked worksheets, a duplicating tray, a box of chalk and a steel tiffin.","caption":"The staff room where a term of materials actually gets made, because this module is about giving evenings back without handing over the judgement."},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"what-the-slide-generators-are-for","runs":[{"text":"What the slide generators are for"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Several tools now turn a prompt into a finished slide deck: Gamma, Canva’s AI presentation feature, Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint, Gemini in Google Slides. They are impressive for thirty seconds. Then you read the slides."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"They are built for business pitches, where a slide is a backdrop for a speaker. The default is a heading, an image, a line of text. For a class of forty, half of whom are copying from the board, that is close to useless. And the check question describes the second failure: the day the projector does not work, and the deck cannot be printed as anything a student could learn from."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"generate-the-substance-not-the-slides","runs":[{"text":"Generate the substance, not the slides"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Reverse the order. Have the model produce the thing that matters, the structure and the words, and let the slide tool do the layout."}]},{"t":"code","lang":"text","label":"Text","text":"Outline a 40-minute lesson on the causes of the 1857 uprising for Class 8, as 10 slides.\nFor each slide give: a title of at most 6 words, three bullet points of at most 12 words each, and 80 to 120 words of speaker notes in plain prose that say what I will explain while this slide is up.\nSlide 1 is a question students can answer from last lesson. Slide 10 is one question that checks whether the lesson landed.\nPlain text, no markdown."},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Now you have a script. The speaker notes are the lesson; the bullets are the prompts. Paste the outline into Google Slides, LibreOffice Impress or PowerPoint (ten slides takes ten minutes) and put the speaker notes in the notes field, which is where they belong."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"When the projector fails, print the notes pages. Every slide’s bullets and its notes, on paper, is a handout that stands on its own. That is the whole reason to build it this way."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"free-layouts","runs":[{"text":"Free layouts"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Google Slides is free with a Google account and has templates that are adequate. LibreOffice Impress is free, runs offline on any laptop, and opens and saves PowerPoint files. Canva’s free tier has better templates than either and exports to PowerPoint. None of these need the AI features to be useful; the AI produced the outline, and a template supplies the look."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"If your school gives you Gemini in Slides or Copilot in PowerPoint, they can generate slides from your outline inside the tool, and the result is better than the generic generators because you supplied the substance. Check that they did not shorten your bullets to look tidy."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"what-goes-on-a-slide-for-a-class","runs":[{"text":"What goes on a slide for a class"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A few rules the generators do not know, and you do:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"A slide students copy from needs the words, not a picture.","b":true},{"text":" If they will write it down, it goes on the slide in full. If they will not, it goes in your notes."}],[{"text":"One idea per slide, and the idea in the title.","b":true},{"text":" “Causes: economic” is a label. “Land tax rose 40% in ten years” is an idea."}],[{"text":"Fewer slides, more time on each.","b":true},{"text":" Ten slides for forty minutes. Twenty-five for forty minutes is a lecture nobody follows."}],[{"text":"The last slide is the check.","b":true},{"text":" One question. Answers on paper, collected. The generator will end on “Thank you” or “Any questions?”, which is a slide with no purpose."}]]},{"t":"h2","id":"images-on-slides","runs":[{"text":"Images on slides"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The previous lesson applies: real photographs from Wikimedia Commons for real things, generated illustrations for scenes, and no generated diagrams. A slide with a wrong diagram is a wrong diagram at two metres wide."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"slides-for-a-phone","runs":[{"text":"Slides for a phone"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Some teachers project from a phone, or hand a phone round a group. Slides built for a large screen are unreadable at 15 centimetres. If the phone is your projector, use a larger font, four lines maximum, and treat the deck as a set of flashcards. The outline prompt above works with “for viewing on a phone screen” added."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-honest-limit","runs":[{"text":"The honest limit"}],"role":"limit"},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A slide deck, however well built, is a lesson delivered from the front, and the model’s outlines lean that way: explanation, then example, then a question. The parts of a lesson where students do something are the parts the outline under-produces, because they are not slides. Add them yourself, as a blank slide that says “Do question 4 now”, so the deck’s timing carries the activity and you are not tempted to talk through the gap."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"A teacher uses a slide generator and gets a polished twelve-slide deck. In class the projector fails, and she finds the slides are unusable as a handout because each has a heading, a stock image and one line of text. What did the tool optimise for, and what should she have generated instead?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"The tool optimised for brevity, which is good presentation practice, and the only real problem on the day was the projector failing."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Brevity on a slide is fine when the substance lives elsewhere; here there was no elsewhere, which is the real failure, and the projector only exposed it."}]},{"text":[{"text":"The tool optimised for speed and produced a first draft that she should have expanded by adding more text to every slide."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"More text per slide makes a worse presentation and only a slightly better handout; the fix is separating the substance into notes, not crowding the slides."}]},{"text":[{"text":"It optimised for looks, as slide generators do; she should have generated an outline with speaker notes and built from that."}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"Slide generators are built for business and cannot produce educational content, so she should not have used one for a lesson at all."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"They can produce usable content given a strong outline; the failure was letting the generator decide the substance as well as the look."}]}],"order":[1,0,2,3],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"diagrams-and-visuals-without-a-designer","title":"Diagrams and visuals without a designer","minutes":9},"next":{"slug":"revision-flashcards-and-spaced-practice","title":"Revision: flashcards and spaced practice","minutes":9}}}