Assigning and teaching Presentation Skills

Oct 14, 2011 by Whitney Hoffman

One of the the important 21st century skills we want students to master is the ability to present information in multimedia formats. One of the tools commonly used is powerpoint or keynote- the basic slide presentation. But often, to make these presentations easier to grade, we set metrics for presentations, such as a certain number of bullet points per slide, etc. However, this is probably only teaching students to give the same dull powerpoint presentations we all have to sit through, rather than teaching them to separate “show” and “tell” in their presentations.  Even if we switch students to things like Prezi, all they “eye candy” in the world won;t make up for poor content or poor presentation skills.

The point of asking students to do a presentation should be to allow them to demonstrate their thinking and mastery of subject matter, as well as the ability to communicate that information to others.  These are the key skills they will need later on in life, and teaching them to make meaningful and engaging presentations early on in school will save them from having to re-learn these skills later on in life.  (Plus think of how much more fun it will be to watch great presentations!)

Seth Godin is a famous writer and marketer, and a great presenter. Here’s an example of his work from the Gel Conference, called “This is Broken” which brings up alot of great points about poor design- give it a look:

Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Seth also has a great blog post on doing presentations that engage people that he even put out as an e-book.  I’ve re-posted it below, to help understand what goes into making compelling presentations, and why  a great presentation accompanied by a handout explaining stuff in detail is probably a much better way to teach kids great presentation skills while  producing work that you can assess and grade.

Seth is a marketer, so his expertise comes from making compelling content people want to pay attention to- I think we can learn a lot from this, to make our classes more interesting, and help our students better communicate their ideas as well.

Really Bad Powerpoint –  Seth Godin

It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to champion at a church or a school or a Fortune 100 company, you’re probably going to use PowerPoint.

Powerpoint was developed by engineers as a tool to help them communicate with the marketing department—and vice versa. It’s a remarkable tool because it allows very dense verbal communication. Yes, you could send a memo, but no one reads anymore. As our companies are getting faster and faster, we need a way to communicate ideas from one group to another. Enter Powerpoint.

Powerpoint could be the most powerful tool on your computer. But it’s not. Countless innovations fail because their champions use PowerPoint the way Microsoft wants them to, instead of the right way.

Communication is the transfer of emotion.

Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them understand why you’re excited (or sad, or optimistic or whatever else you are.)If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures, then cancel the meeting and send in a report.

Our brains have two sides. The right side is emotional, musical and moody. The left side is focused on dexterity, facts and hard data. When you show up to give a presentation, people want to use both parts of their brain. So they use the right side to judge the way you talk, the way you dress and your body language. Often, people come to a conclusion about your presentation by the time you’re on the second slide. After that, it’s often too late for your bullet points to do you much good.

You can wreck a communication process with lousy logic or unsupported facts, but you can’t complete it without emotion. Logic is not enough.

Champions must sell—to internal audiences and to the outside world.

If everyone in the room agreed with you, you wouldn’t need to do a presentation, would you? You could save a lot of time by printing out a one-page project report and delivering it to each person. No, the reason we do presentations is to make a point, to sell one or more ideas.

If you believe in your idea, sell it. Make your point as hard as you can and get what you came for. Your audience will thank you for it, because deep down, we all want to be sold.

Four Components To A Great Presentation

First, make yourself cue cards. Don’t put them on the screen. Put them in your hand. Now, you can use the cue cards you made to make sure you’re saying what you came to say.

Second, make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you’re saying is true not just accurate.

Talking about pollution in Houston? Instead of giving me four bullet points of EPA data, why not read me the stats but show me a photo of a bunch of dead birds, some smog and even a diseased lung? This is cheating! It’s unfair! It works.

Third, create a written document. A leave-behind. Put in as many footnotes or details as you like. Then, when you start your presentation, tell the audience that you’re going to give them all the details of your presentation after it’s over, and they don’t have to write down everything you say. Remember, the presentation is to make an emotional sale. The document is the proof that helps the intellectuals in your audience accept the idea that you’ve sold them on emotionally.

IMPORTANT: Don’t hand out the written stuff at the beginning! If you do, people will read the memo while you’re talking and ignore you. Instead, your goal is to get them to sit back, trust you and take in the emotional and intellectual points of your presentation.

Fourth, create a feedback cycle. If your presentation is for a project approval, hand people a project approval form and get them to approve it, so there’s no ambiguity at all about what you’ve all agreed to.

The reason you give a presentation is to make a sale. So make it. Don’t leave without a “yes,” or at the very least, a commitment to a date or to future deliverables.

Bullets Are For the NRA
Here are the five rules you need to remember to create amazing Powerpoint presentations:

No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.
The home run is easy to describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you’re going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they’ll see the image (and vice versa).1

Sure, this is different from the way everyone else does it. But everyone else is busy defending the status quo (which is easy) and you’re busy championing brave new innovations, which is difficult.

After seeing Seth present in person, I totally changed the way I present.  I follow these rules as closely as I can.  People still ask for copies of my slides, even though they don’t help very much without me there, and I do make slides available on slideshare. I think the slides act as a souvenir of the presentation, or as a template for others to try to follow.

But the secret here for everyone is that people can’t take in two language inputs at the same time- just think how hard it is to talk on the phone and write an email at the same time- you can’t do both.  So likewise, when you are speaking, if you have too many words on the slides, people read the slides and don’t pay any attention to what you are saying.  We need to teach everyone, especially students, to use slides as illustrations, and demonstration points of a talk- the “show” portion, and leave the “telling” to the person presenting.

Give it a try, and see how much of a difference it makes.  And let us know how it works out for you!

Where do Good Ideas Come From?

Jul 5, 2011 by Whitney Hoffman

A group called the RSA in the UK has a fantastic series of lectures, and a series of “animates” – videos illustrating the lectures that are simply fantastic and amazing to watch.  I thought I’d share this one with you today, on “Where good Ideas Come From” by Steven Johnson.  This especially resonates with me as I think about the ISTE technology standards and how we can go about trying to “teach” creativity and critical thinking to kids in school.

 

Let me know what you think!

 

Howard Gardner on Education

Jun 13, 2011 by Whitney Hoffman

This is a great video of Howard Garner, the “father” of multiple intelligences, from the Edutopia website.   Jenifer and I moderate a group on Differentiated Instruction and personalized learning on Edutopia, and we’d love to have you join us there as well. We’re hoping that our book, The Differentiated Instruction Book of Lists, will help classroom teachers make  personalized learning and project based learning a larger part of a student’s school experience, especially because this is the knowledge they rake with them, not just a series of facts stored in their brains.  The video is well worth the 7 minutes- let us know what you think!

Human Centered Education

May 25, 2011 by Whitney Hoffman

I attended a great education “unconference” this past week- Educamp Philly.  EduCamp was attended primarily by teachers and administrators, and most sessions discussed challenges facing education, both philosophically as well as integration of technology into the classroom. I gave a session asking the question “How can we bring differentiated instruction to professional development?” in order to try and gauge whether forming individualized education plans and project based learning principals for teachers seemed to be a logical and reasonable approach.  I’m becoming more and more convinced that the basic good teaching and learning concepts we all know and love are equally applicable to adults as to children, but somehow, we seem to forget that these principals are true when it comes to professional development.

For example, in every school, the teachers will fall along a normalized curve regarding their tech skills and comfort with computers.  There will be those who are gadget and gear heads, always exploring the outer boundaries of what’s possible, those who are willing to try new things if they know they’re there, those who only want to give it a whirl if they can ensure success before they start, and those who are a bit phobic and doubt the usefulness of all these new toys as another fad or  false promise, because they’ve seen so many trends come and go in the past.  If you think about this, this may mirror the distribution of kids in any classroom- a few geeks and gifted students who will always need more challenge; the high achievers motivated by grades and performance; the middle kids who try hard and learn, but aren’t the gunners; and the kids who are hard to reach or don’t seem to care, or need special help to make sure they can pass.

Therefore, if we know that in order to meet the needs of the kids in the classroom, we should consider adopting differentiated instruction and personalized learning for kids tomeet their own learning styles and needs, why would the same thing not hold true for the adults?

Should we consider rethinking professional development?

Paying consultants and speakers to come in and tell us about the proverbial school on the hill can be inspiring, but often this shining example is met with resistance because no one ever sees that they have the ability, if they pull together, to achieve similar results. However, if we move to a model of professional development based on teachers setting up a learning plan based on what they need and want to achieve, professional development can adopt a project-based learning model where teachers can have firm goals of what they want to achieve over the course of a school year, and a plan on how to achieve it.  By checking in every other month or so, teachers and administration can gauge progress and offer help in areas where a teacher may be stuck or need to re-evaluate and adjust goals.  This method of professional development, if supported by administration and other teachers would go a long way to help achieve the supportive personal learning communities we all talk about.  It will be a demonstrable experiment on whether differentiated instruction and project based learning works, helping teachers to gain the confidence needed to integrate this approach into the classroom for their own students.  More importantly, in the end, teachers will have something tangible to point to, indicating what they have learned and how they have potentially increased their student’s learning and achievement in the classroom in the process.

Just like the marketplace in the “real world” becoming more customer-centric, education for adults and for students needs to adapt and become more learner-centered and focused. Project based learning, personalized learning, and individualized education and professional development plans may be one way to achieve this.

I’m dying to hear what you think, including any and all obstacles to making this a reality.  how would this play out in your school?  What barriers are there to acceptance?  What would have to happen to make sure your professional development was not one-size fits all and seemed more meaningful and engaging?  Share your thoughts below!

The Learning Curve and Technology

Apr 29, 2011 by Whitney Hoffman

Yesterday, I was at a meeting where a typical “mexican stand-off” began to take place. One group wanted a group of teachers to receive professional development for a technology only a small portion of them had access to, and were insisting the PD had to take place first; in the mean time, the teacher-learners were saying, quite reasonably, that they weren’t eager to take a course for something they wouldn’t have an opportunity to implement, and if it was eventually implemented, the knowledge they acquired in the PD would be long enough ago to make it useless and it would need to be redone.

These sorts of arguments take place all the time. Each side has it’s points that are perfectly reasonable on the face. However, in education, we seem not to want to spend money or adopt a technology until we can be 100% assured of its eager acceptance, use and return on investment. What drives me insane is that teachers and educators, out of everyone else in society all together, have first hand knowledge of something called the learning curve.

The learning curve, as you all know, is the process of trying and experimenting with learning new skills and acquiring information. It may take many repetitions, experimentation and tweeks before people feel masterful with any new piece of information. We have yet to develop a pill or two hour course that can guarantee to make a kid read- the process of learning to walk, read, ride a bike, etc. all takes a number of trials, making mistakes, and eventually reaching mastery.

Yet it seems like some adults forget this completely when it comes to expecting instant results from adding things like computers, tablets or smart boards in the classroom. In even the best of circumstances with flawless and epic professional development, teachers will still have to adapt any new tool- a textbook, a worksheet or a computer, ELMO or Smart Board into their lesson plan and curriculum. Heck, every year they have to adapt their current lesson plans to a whole new group of students who come in, not as widgets down an assembly line, but as a whole new group and community that needs to be transformed into a community of learners. Those lessons and plans will need to be tweeked along the way as the teacher gets to know the students- and no amount of prior knowledge makes that problem go away. Experience does make the process faster, as a seasoned teacher can spot patterns they’ve seen before and may have more tools readily available to pull out when needed. But regardless, in September, there is annually an adjustment period for everyone, teacher and student alike, as each learn about the other on a standard learning curve.

No one can reasonably and 100% guarantee that any new technology or curriculum or ANYTHING at all will be 100% successful in the classroom in advance. We can say that others have had good experiences, and that support can be provided, but that in the end, teachers will have to learn about the new tools by using and experimenting with them to find out what works best for them.

If we want to solve these sorts of issues, I think it’s time to consider whether we need to equally apply the principals of Differentiating Instruction, Personalized and Project based learning to professional development.

Maybe teachers have to devise, along with other teachers in their school or grade, true professional learning communities. Not everyone will have the same level of experience and expertise, but they can help each other. What is a group decided to set a few goals in the beginning of the year- a project- such as adapting 3 or 4 units in order to incorporate new technology tools ranging from smart boards to wikis and blogs? What if they set a goal to make sure every classroom at a certain grade level had its own web page for communicating information with students and parents? This would be a tangible, useful goal to set, making sure not only that teachers had something to show for their PD at the end, but that they also got more direct experience implementing tools in a real life setting, which helps consolidate learning, just as we recommend for kids. This makes the classroom much more of a laboratory and exploration of learning, which has the useful side effect of injecting a little more joy and risk into the equation, making it more enjoyable for teachers and students alike.

Whether we call these things Individualized Learning Plans for teachers, Professional development milestones, Project based learning for educators- it doesn’t really matter. What matters in the end is that the emphasis will be in trusting teachers to set and meet their personal and professional goals. This is probably a much better measure of teacher engagement and professional development and evaluation than looking at student test scores. What got accomplished and what did not? What additional supports are needed? What could we do to take this to the next level next year? This analysis will do more to improve teacher morale and student learning than any of the current crime and punishment like measures that are in place today.

There will always be the 16% technological laggards that still wonder what was wrong with slates and McGuffey’s Readers, and the twenty percent of people who hate anything new regardless of what it might be. In fact, every teacher knows this, because there are always one or two kids in a class who are more difficult to teach and more resistant, but we don’t refuse to teach the rest of the students because these kids aren’t on board- that would be silly. We wouldn’t stop teaching if one kid was absent. So why is this an issue for adults?

We simply can no longer afford to wait for 100% compliance or 100% agreement to move forward. If we waited for everyone to be on board before doing something, we never would have gotten out of the plains in Africa, and would still be wondering whether this new found “fire” thing was really advised or was simply too dangerous to be reasonably contained and adopted as a fuel source. (Ok, that was a little snarky, sorry.) Seriously though, we have to start taking chances as professionals and be willing to learn and experiment, the same way we expect students to do every day. Unless we adopt this attitude of going forward and be willing to work things out, we’ll never make the progress teachers and students both deserve.

Learning to Communicate

Mar 5, 2011 by Whitney Hoffman

An important part of personalizing learning is helping students learn to communicate what they know to you, the teacher, demonstrating their true depth of understanding beyond filling in a bubble sheet or taking a multiple choice (guess) assessment, where all they have to do is recognize the right answer rather than truly understand WHY it’s correct.

The Infographic below is a great example of how combining information and pictures conveys more information and meaning than the words alone would have in a list or paragraph. It’s also why it’s going to become more important than ever to make sure kids understand aspects of good design, “user interface” and other aspects of their projects. Good design and layout of information enhances understanding; bad presentation clouds and confuses meaning. Rather than cutting things like art and music from schools, we need to find ways to teach these subjects, not only for the joy of creation and imagination, but because these tools are becoming increasingly important to use alongside the deluge of information we have coming at us, to frame, inform and advocate ideas. And for those of us who are constantly concerned about students taking short cuts or plagiarism, there are very few short cuts available in an infographics project.

Here’s a basic “lesson plan” you could use for an infographic:

1. Select a subject where there’s a lot of information, or a hypothesis, like in science.
2. Collect information, reference materials, and collect links and make an interactive bibliography if possible.
3. Think how to make all of these facts and evidence tell a story. How can you show people how big a problem is? Can you find something to compare it to? Past numbers? Number of times the book would wrap around the world? How can you make this data create a picture in someone’s mind?
4. Illustrate your data. Find or draw pictures to make your point. You can use screen shots, photos from flickr, take your own pictures, whatever.
5. Present your infographic. It can be a poster, a glogster, a keynote/powerpoint presentation, a movie- you name it.

Let us know if you put this to work in your classroom, and how it works out!

Via: Voxy Blog