Pecha Kucha Project

Pecha Kucha Project: Teaching Children Healthy Habits

Link out to:  "Teaching Children Healthy Habits" 

As a mother of two young girls, I focused this presentation on teaching children healthy habits. When I wrote this, being a female in the modern culture wasn’t easy; it was a culture full of body obsession and objectification which ended up being internalized into our thinking and belief systems. Girls learned from peers and media (television, magazines at the grocery store, comic books, etc.) what a female body is “supposed” to look like or what was acceptable and what was not. I wanted to address these body image issues but also teach parents how to model healthy choices to their children.

My goal audience was other parents who wanted to engage their children and help them navigate through the cultural perception of body image in a healthy way. My learning objective was to educate and assist parents in dealing with this issue by offering them practical advice and practices. I highlighted how to create healthy, non-body shaming practices into the parents’ lives first and then showed them how to model that healthy behavior for their children and to include their children into those practices. I focused on family-friendly daily movements and exercise that could be incorporated into busy family lives. I highlighted various ways to include children in food choices and preparation to instill a lifelong practice of healthy food choices. I taught parents and their children how to build different body image viewpoints and offered them a way to resist the body objectification and thin as ideal in our daughters (and sons).

I used my own photographs of myself, my family, and my fitness and dietary choices to demonstrate the lessons in this pecha kucha. I sketched out a storyboard outlining my main points first on paper and then transferred and finalized them on Microsoft Word.  I experimented with Google Slides and PowerPoint, but ultimately created the slideshow in iMovie for PC which I purchased for this project.

Design Decisions

I designed the presentation to appeal to parents of young children using the standard 20x20 restrictions of the pecha kuch model. I kept my slides simple, while still providing a variety of images that supported the narration.

Design Decision #1

I used a simple background so that my photos were the focus. Minimalism and simplicity can lead to clarity, as Reynolds (2009) indicated (p. 115). Lankow, Ritchie and Crooks (2012) recommended using a cohesive color palette (p. 177) which I attempted by utilizing a neutral background color so that any photos I embedded would not clash.

Design Decision #2

I omitted text on the slides. Reynolds (2009) made the point that the more visual the slides (as opposed to bullet points), the more impact they would have (p. 185). Lankow, Ritchie and Crooks (2012) also mentioned minimizing slide contents (p. 176) which is why I chose to stick with only photos.

Design Decision #3

I began by storyboarding the presentation on paper. Reynolds (2009) indicated that most people plan their presentations using software tools but that by “going analog” and using paper to sketch out ideas made for a more creative result (p. 45).  Heath and Heath (2008) indicated that taking time in the process and sequence of information improved the flow of the presentation (p. 26). I accomplished a clear storyline by planning and drafting my ideas on paper first.

Design Decision #4

I chose a topic of personal importance to me and included personal photos. Presentations that are personal and from the heart are authentic and make for more compelling stories (Reynolds, 2008, p. 91). Heath and Heath (2008) echoed this when they emphasized that emotion helps make a story stick (p. 17). The various photos of my children were  personal to me and I hoped they conveyed the message I tried to communicate.

Design Decision #5

I made the learning objectives clear from the first slide. I used an inverted pyramid structure, with the most important information in the beginning, which kept things simple and easy to understand (Heath and Heath, 2008, p. 31). Reynolds (2009) indicated that restrictions on this type of presentation forced one’s focus (p. 41). Because the pecha kucha model had restrictions of 20 slides for 20 seconds it forced me to create an outline and stay organized.

Bibliography

Crooks, R., Lankow, J., & Ritchie, J. (2012). Infographics: The power of visual storytelling. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2008). Made to stick: Why some ideas die and others survive. New York, NY: Random House.

Reynolds, G. (2009). Presentation zen design: Simple design principles and techniques to enhance your presentations. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.