Worked example · Science · Year 7
DCF: Producing → Evaluating and improving digital content
A completed review of the printed presentation, with the pupil's real comments written out in full. Show it after pupils have filled in their own grid, and use it to check whether they found the three factual errors.
| Slide | What works | What does not work | Exactly what I would change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The dark blue background suits a space topic and will not glare in a dark room. | The title is "solar system" in small letters, tucked into the bottom corner, and there is no name on it. | Retitle it "Our Solar System", move it to the middle of the slide, and add the author's name, class and the date underneath. |
| 2 | The information itself is accurate — the Solar System really did form about 4.6 billion years ago. | It is one 110-word paragraph with no punctuation in the middle. Nobody can read that and listen at the same time. There is no source either. | Cut it to four bullet points of about eight words each: how old it is, what is in it, how it formed, why the planets all orbit the same way. Add "Source: NASA Science — Solar System" at the bottom. |
| 3 | The last bullet, that Earth is the only planet known to have life, is correct and is the most interesting point on the slide. | Two of the four facts are wrong, the yellow text on a white background is unreadable, and "Mercery" is spelled wrongly. | Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun — Mercury is the closest. Saturn has 274 confirmed moons, not 6. Spell Mercury correctly. Put white text on the dark blue used on slide 1. |
| 4 | A photograph of Saturn is the right choice for a slide about the rings. | The photo has been stretched sideways so Saturn looks like an oval, the text sits on top of the picture, and there is no title, caption or source. | Resize using a corner handle, not a side handle, so the shape stays correct. Add the title "Saturn", move the text into a box beside the photo, and caption it "Figure 1: Saturn, photographed by NASA's Cassini spacecraft". |
| 5 | It is true that Pluto is very cold, very distant and has five known moons. | Pluto is not the ninth planet — it has been classed as a dwarf planet since 2006. "Seperate" is spelled wrongly, and this slide uses a different font from all the others. | Rewrite the first bullet as "Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, so the Solar System has eight planets". Correct "separate". Set the font back to the one used on slides 1 to 4. |
| 6 | Ending by inviting questions is polite and gives the audience a way in. | "Thankyou for lisening" contains two spelling mistakes, and there is no summary and no list of sources. | Correct it to "Thank you for listening". Add three bullet points summarising what was found out, and a final slide listing every website used. |
Meets criteria 2 and 3: every comment names the slide, says what is wrong and gives the replacement wording, and the review covers the design (colour, stretched photograph, mixed fonts) as well as the content (facts, spelling, sources).
1. Correct the three factual errors on slides 3 and 5: Mercury, not Jupiter, is closest to the Sun; Saturn has 274 confirmed moons, not 6; Pluto is a dwarf planet, not the ninth planet.
2. Cut slide 2 from one 110-word paragraph to four short bullet points and add the source.
3. Change the yellow-on-white text on slides 3 and 5 to white text on the dark blue background used on slide 1.
Why number 1 matters most: if the audience walks out believing something untrue, the presentation has done harm rather than nothing at all. A wall of text or a bad colour choice is annoying, but it does not teach anybody the wrong facts, and both take less than a minute to put right.
Meets criteria 1 and 4: all three factual errors found and corrected with the right figures, ranked above the presentation problems, with a reason for the ranking.
The eight planets
Source: NASA Planetary Fact Sheet
[White text on the same dark blue as slide 1. Same font as slides 1, 2 and 4. Title 40 pt, bullets 24 pt.]
Meets criterion 5: four correct bullets instead of four sloppy ones, every figure checked against the fact table, a source line added, and the readability problem fixed at the same time.