When dealing with presentations, I came across two problems that occurred quite often:

1. Students did not stick to the time-limit. Okay, one could interrupt, when the time is up, time them using cards (5 minutes, 1 minute, final sentence). The first option is not very polite and the second one might put students under pressure with a negative impact on the quality of the presentation.
2. When accompanied by a Powerpoint presentation, they tended to read from the slides, even after I made clear that they should not do it.

Viewing presentations in the ignite format, I thought, it would be worth to try in classes too. Ignite talks follow these rules:

• A talk lasts five minutes.
• A presentation consists of 20 slides (including headline etc.)
• The slides auto-advance after 15 seconds.

This is how an ignite talk looks like

These rules have various effects:

• A talk is never too long.
• The slides do not contain too much text. In fact, they should contain no words or simply catchwords.
• It forces students to practice in advance. A surprising number of students haven't practiced their talk. But this format needs practice.

The limits by the original ignite talks might be a little strict. However, it can be adapted:

• More time per slide,
• Less slides,
• Advanced by the teacher/presenter.
• ...

I'm looking forward to try this in class.