Today is the first week of Term 2, Semester 1 and I gave a lecture on waterscapes. In the past I learnt that some aspects of slide design and presentation works for me and others don’t. For today, I made sure that I had a picture or a diagram for each slide. As students gets bogged down by too much text, I realise it is more effective to explain concepts with a single diagram or drawing that occupies the whole slide and a simple heading. The explanatory text is reserved for the following slide so that students can read it for themselves online later. I would approach the screen and use arm movements to highlight a particular area of diagram or a text while I was explaining. This is more effective than using a laser pointer and staying put in one location. The advantage of the setup is that the screen is huge and I can stand alongside it while explaining. Pictures and diagrams get scaled up to human proportions and become quite striking. I also tried to relate the theory and topic to the design project site that they are doing for this term. The students were very attentive and did not talk much and this was an encourage sign.