Auto-generated Presentations Present a New Challenge

The AI trend isn’t going away. Every week AI is built into more of the tools that we and our students have at our fingertips. Case in point, AI is now incorporated into all elements of Canva.

Canva’s Magic Design tool can be used to create a complete slideshow presentation from just one sentence. To be clear, it doesn’t just design the layout of the slides. It populates the slides with text and graphics to support the presentation topic!

Last week I gave it a try and with just the prompt of the “Five causes of World War Two” I had a complete presentation made for me in under a minute. I tried it again with the prompt of “benefits of investing in a 401k” and got an even longer presentation in just under a minute.

Watch this video to see how Canva’s Magic Design tool can create a presentation for you from just one simple prompt.

I’ll grant you that neither of the presentations in the video above were terribly detailed. Both presentations did provide a great starting point to fill in the details. I liken it to using one of the canned curriculum products that textbook publishers provide and leave you to fill in the gaps and errors. The difference is that what Canva makes looks better.

This Changes the Ol’ “Five Minute Presentation” Assignment

It’s only a matter of time before all of the major slideshow tools have the same capability that Canva has. When that happens it’s time to reevaluate why we give presentation assignments to students and what we’re looking for when we give those assignments.

When writing one sentence generates a whole presentation in under a minute, what do we have students do with the time we used to give them to build slides? What do we ask them to give presentations on? Like I wrote last week, I don’t have all of the answers to these questions, but I’m working on it and I hope you are as well.

A New Project to Try!

If you’re looking for a new project to try with your students before the end of the year, give Animated Explanations a try! I have a course that shows you everything you need to know about it.

Or if you’re looking for something a little shorter, try Around the World With Google Earth!