Category: Pedagogy

Keynote on iOS got an update yesterday, with a zillion improvements, the biggest of which are multitasking and Bluetooth keyboard support. These are features that are being added to lots of iOS 9 apps, but on Keynote they enable three fantastic use cases during presentations.

Use a Bluetooth Clicker to Control Your Presentation

The new update brings lots of keyboard shortcuts to Keynote. If you have a Bluetooth keyboard connected, hold the ⌘ key to see a few:

What isn’t as obvious is that keyboard shortcuts work while presenting as well. As far as I can tell, they almost perfectly correspond to the OS X version of Keynote. It occurred to me that most bluetooth clickers just map their buttons onto keyboard keys, so I picked up this bluetooth clicker from Staples to test it out despite the fact that it said Windows/Android only on the box.

And, lo! I could advance and backtrack slides, and even mute the screen (the equivalent of pressing the “b” key). In the past this has required some wacky workarounds using Accessibility features that broke between versions. This feels much better.

Use (Almost) Any App for Presenter Notes

When using Split View, only the “main” app can use features like the microphone, camera, and, most relevant to this post, video out. This means that if you’re using Keynote as your main app while Airplaying or using a dongle to project your iPad onto an external screen, only the Keynote presentation will be visible to your audience. This means you’re free to keep OmniOutliner (pictured), Notes, or any other Split View-enabled app on the side of your screen while presenting. As someone who prefers to have my full outline available to me rather than slide-specific Presenter Notes, this is huge.

Control Two Screens at Once

This may not be relevant to a lot of people, but I’m lucky enough to teach in an environment where I have a main, centered projector and an LCD screen on either side of it. I generally use an Apple TV to project a version of the class handout from my iPad running GoodNotes[1] onto the main screen, and Keynote slides from my iPhone on the side screens (either conceptual slides to provide context or formulas for students to reference).

Traditionally, this has meant controlling both my iPad and iPhone simultaneously, which can get a bit hairy. With Split View, this is no longer an issue.

Since GoodNotes has a video out mode, keeping it as the main app on my screen projects only the handout via Airplay. I can then use Keynote’s remote function as the side app to control my iPhone on the side screens. It sounds a bit complicated, but having it all on one screen makes this feel surprisingly smooth.

Better, Faster, Lighter

Over the years, I’ve increasingly preferred my iPad for presentations over my Mac. With these new features[2], my iPad is now capable of creating presentation environments that my Mac simply cannot. Can’t wait to see what’s next.

I use Keynote for all of my presentations. It’s a hassle to have to run them off of my own devices instead of using a venue’s PC (though it’s getting easier), but it’s worth it for one reason: making animations is incredibly easy in Keynote.

Fitting In

When I say animations, I don’t mean dissolves and smash cuts. I mean moving objects within a slide in a way that shows them in a new light or reveals more context.

For example, here’s a graph showing changes in global surface temperatures over the past thirteen ears (which looks flat), which I then frame in terms of a much longer timescale (which shows temperatures rising at an increasing rate):

Here’s another example from my dissertation work. My research involves taking randomized trials and analyzing them as an interrupted time series analysis. This can be a little difficult to understand conceptually, so I use an animation to visually show the difference between the two analytic strategies:

To me, these animations are useful because the objects of interest never disappear from the screen. They are simply reframed in a different context, allowing the audience to make the leap from one setting to another.

I’m sure there’s some great literature on why this is more compelling, but all I can say is that it has worked very well in my experience. Better still, the time cost of making these is much lower than you might think.

From Transitions to Animations

I made a toy example that builds a diagram using three methods: a simple dissolve transition, an animation, and an animation with an additional delay that I find appealing. Here they in sequence:

And here they are next to one another (I timed it so that the actual length of transitions is the same for all three):

Here’s a link to the Keynote file, if you’d like to play with it further.

From Dissolve to Magic Move

Going from the dissolve transitions to the animated transitions is as simple as changing the transition between slides from “Dissolve” to “Magic Move”. Magic Move is a Keynote-specific transition that detects identical objects between two slides, then transitions between the slides by having those objects move from their place in Slide 1 to their place in Slide 2. The easiest way to make this happen is as follows:

1. Duplicate Slide 1 and change its transition to “Magic Move”;
2. Move around the objects in the duplicated slide as you’d like;
3. Profit.

It can be a little finicky at times, especially if you have lots of similar objects (I’ve had this problem when there were lots of arrows on a slide – more on that later), but for most situations it works.

From Magic Move to Delayed Transitions

The jump in quality from Dissolve to Magic Move is enormous; now let’s talk add some frills. I often like to have the objects in Slide 2 that are brand new to fade in after the initial movement has taken place, as opposed to during. Doing this requires a few more steps:

1. Select all the objects in Slide 2 that aren’t part of the Magic Move transition;
2. Give them each a “Fade In” animation (I tend to use Dissolve with a short duration);
3. Click on Build Order;
4. Decide if you want these objects to fade all at once or one at a time, and make the appropriate adjustment;
5. Make sure that the first animation in Build Order is set to start “After Transition”.

This may seem like a lot of steps for a small change, but there’s an added benefit: by having objects fade in after the transition, you remove them from Magic Move’s detection algorithm. So, if you’re noticing that Magic Move is choosing the wrong objects to move, you can remove them from the equation by having them fade in afterwards. Bingo!

From Slides to Videos

In my opinion, these animations make presentations a much more valuable tool to convey complex information in a comprehensible way. So valuable, in fact, that I’ve taken the additional step of making them full fledged videos. Almost all of the materials in the Teaching section of my website were made using Keynote. After setting up animations to my liking, I use the “Record Slideshow” function to add a voiceover and export it as a video file. But that’s for another post.