Brainslides

Presenting better to teach better
 

No better way to sink a speech

“As a professional speechwriter, I often tell me clients that there’s no better way to sink a speech than to build it around a Powerpoint presentation. Watching Mitt Romney’s much-hyped health care speech only confirmed that theory.”

David Meadvin
The above quote, from a post on the Presentation Magic blog, is a fabulous summary of what is wrong with many speeches, lectures, and presentations today. Namely that the speech is built around a PowerPoint.
But it's only half the story. It doesn't provide a solution. Fortunately, a simple way to describe the solution can be found in a quick rephrasing of this idea:

"There's no better way to improve a speech than to build your slides around your presentation."

The biggest mistake teachers, speakers, lecturers make is creating the slides first in PowerPoint and then speaking by using the bullet-laden, information dense slides as a teleprompter. The correct way to prepare a speech or lesson plan is to first determine what the important points are, develop supporting statements, facts, figures, and even script the presentation in what you feel is the most effective way. Only then should you open your slide software to create simple, visual supporting slides – including blank ones when appropriate – to accompany the points you want to emphasize.

That's it. It's simple. Stop building your lesson around the notes you've unfortunately typed into PowerPoint by habit. Start preparing great lessons by teaching using good practices that have been shown to improve learning, and over time develop some well designed visuals that support your important points.

Posted May 18, 2011 by Nathan Cashion 
 

The perfect cold opening

Stop wasting time at the beginning of a talk to introduce yourself, explain why you were asked to give a talk, list an agenda of what you want to talk about, make a poor attempt at a joke. Instead, jump in and get on with the content.

This video, of a very short TED Talk, is a perfect example of how a cold opening can grab the audience's attention right from the beginning. You'll always have time to do those other things later in your talk, but the first 30 seconds are so precious, why waste them?

Sebastian Thrun: Google's driverless car | Video on TED.com

http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverless_car.html#

Sebastian's talk has all the elements of a great opening, and follows Garr Reynolds' instructions to start your presentation with PUNCH. It was a personal story of his interests as a boy, an unexpected turn of events when he lost his good friend to a car accident, a novel way to look at the challenge of automobile travel, presented a challenging problem to overcome, and was humorous in its delivery.

Posted April 18, 2011 by Nathan Cashion 
 

Washington Post: U.S. teaching practices oppose

This article from Linda Darling-Hammond at the Washington Post summed up what I have noticed and feared about education for some time now.

"The first ever International Summit on Teaching, convened last week in New York City, showed perhaps more clearly than ever that the United States has been pursuing an approach to teaching almost diametrically opposed to that pursued by the highest-achieving nations."

It has been clear to me in my experience as a student that teaching practices rarely match what we know about how people learn. And yet, many other countries seem to understand it pretty well.

"…[G]overnment officials and union leaders from 16 nations met together in candid conversations that found substantial consensus about how to create a well-prepared and accountable teaching profession. … The growing de-professionalization of teaching in America was recognized as out of step with the strategies pursued by the world’s educational leaders."

I understand that the country has deep economic issues., but those in charge seem to be narrowly focused on the budget issues at hand, rather than looking at return on investment.

"And with states’ willingness to lower standards rather than raise salaries for the teachers of the poor, a growing number of recruits enter with little prior training, trying to learn on-the-job with the uneven mentoring provided by cash-strapped districts."

And yet, I am not sure what the solution is...

"Meanwhile, some policymakers argue that we should eliminate requirements for teacher training, stop paying teachers for gaining more education, let anyone enter teaching, and fire those later who fail to raise student test scores. And efforts like those in Wisconsin to eliminate collective bargaining create the prospect that salaries and working conditions will sink even lower, making teaching an unattractive career for anyone with other professional options."

Posted March 24, 2011 by Nathan Cashion 
 

Another argument for NO HANDOUTS

I'm running the tech for an educators' meeting this morning (I wasn't involved in the preparation of this presentation). As is customary, the presenter provided their PowerPoint slides as handouts to the attendees. These were printed the day before, but the presenter mentioned to me that she had made some quick changes last night.

A few minutes in, she advanced to a slide that wasn't in the handout. I underestimated the repercussions – nearly every attendee began flipping through the handout searching for the elusive missing slide! Their attention was completely diverted from the presenter – who either didn't notice or didn't think to explain that the slide was missing from their handouts.

To add to the disruption, I was controlling a pre-loaded version of the presentation for a webcast. I also received the slides before the edits, and was not sure whether I skipped a slide, missed a slide, or what!

This is just another example of the drawbacks to providing handouts to the audience before the presentation. It is better to prepare a proper document to accompany the presentation (not just a copy of the slides) and provide it after the presentation.

Posted March 23, 2011 by Nathan Cashion 
 

Episode 1: Introduction

(download)

Mike and I introduce ourselves and give a general overview of the show and what we'll be covering in future episodes.

For more info on our hosts:
Nathan Cashion @ about.me

Mike Pulsifer at @mikepulsifer on twitter or visit his website at mike-pulsifer.org

Posted March 20, 2011 by Nathan Cashion 
 

Drop Images for Full Bleed

(download)



NATHAN CASHION : 

Posted March 3, 2011 by Nathan Cashion 
 

Slides Don't Speak, You Do!

In a recent lecture I attended, I heard the professor say the following as he advanced to the next slide in his PowerPoint, "So what this slide talks about is..."

I thought nothing of it for a moment. I've heard people make the same comment many times in lectures, pitches, etc. As I looked at the slide, I thought if this slide could speak it would sound like a lot like a socially-inept scientist with an agile mind and free tongue! In other words: utterly incomprehensible. I sat patiently and hoped that the professor would translate the slide into English.

If you have to explain what a slide 'says' then something is wrong with the way it is designed.

Slides do not talk. You do. Slides cannot teach, they can only help you teach.

Design your slides to follow what you would naturally say and to help illustrate complex or abstract ideas. Don't use slides as your lecture notes. Take advantage of (but don't overuse) slide transitions and animations to show the main idea and then progressively reveal the details as you talk about them.

Posted February 17, 2010 by Nathan Cashion