Presentation Zen

I stumbled across Garr Reynold's blog Presentation Zen about a year ago and then bought his book Presentation Zen when it came out at the beginning of 2008.  It's a good read and gave me lots of ideas for improving my own style in front of the classroom. 

In a recent post he gave his recommendations for ten books that would help improve presentation skills.  Not one is a how-to book on using Powerpoint or Keynote.  They are all books on design or speaking. Since his book has been such a big influence on me, I will be checking out several of these titles.

So many books I want to read.  So many projects to grade.  Alas, no one pays me to read books.



[Image captured of Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Design-Delivery/dp/0321525655/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263140178&sr=8-1]

Powerpoint Game Templates

Joe teaches in the computer lab the period before me and he is my hero. He is knowledgeable about his subject area. He has great relationship with his students. He is creative. Always seems to be on top of things....even when he's not.

Walked into his classroom recently and the class was broken into two teams and they were playing a trivia game off the internet. His previous lesson had run short. Really short. So, he fired up a site and had the kids working on something for the rest of the hour. They thought they were getting some free time. Joe had his kids on task....although not quite the task he had originally planned. I was envious of how quickly he changed direction on the fly. I probably would have tried to stretch the short lesson out long. Painful for me. Painful for the students.

So, one of the things I want to add to my bag of tricks for this next teaching year is some filler ideas. I want some of those web sites that I can send the kids to if I need to fill in a little time. I want to have some activities ready when I run short. Have a bad lesson. Need a change of pace. I want some fun ways to check for understanding before they walk out that door.

This site gives me a few tools I plan on adding to my repertoire. It has templates for creating games in PowerPoint like Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Bingo.

[via Free Technology for Teachers]

Students and PowerPoint

I teach a High School survey class called Multimedia. It's main purpose is to get our incoming classes up to speed on some of the programs and equipment available to them in our building. I try to create a curriculum that is oriented towards helping my students succeed in their other classes and to this end I like to ask the rest of the staff what skills they would like to see me reinforce. In a recent request for this information from teachers, the two main items listed were creating better PowerPoint slides and citing web resources.

The PowerPoint slide issue was by far the bigger concern. It isn't that the kids don't know how to make a presentation. They have the technical side down. It's that their slides are cluttered. They have too many bullet points. Text is hard or impossible to read. Graphics are blurry or pixelated.

I must add that they have learned a lot of this by watching us. Us teachers, that is. We are guilty of the same things. I have been to more than one staff meeting in the past 10 years that have demonstrated one if not all of the above bad design points. (I've made a few myself.)

How many times have you been to a presentation where the presenter says, "I know this is hard to read but...." or "I know that there is a lot of information on this slide but..." I don't know how to get the point of good design vs bad design across to teachers but I am working on a new unit for my students. I want to narrow it down to just 2 or 3 main principals they should follow in their design process for a PowerPoint slide. Possibly:

1. Font size
2. If you are going to read it to me don't put it on screen!
3. If you think its important that I see your picture. Make sure I can see it

It's rough. I'm still thinking about it. Any suggestions from you other teacher types out there? If you had to give your students just one recommendation for creating a good PowerPoint slide, what would it be?

[Image: "bored & tired": Flickr: Uploaded on January 3, 2008 by jakub_hla: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakub_hlavaty/2163782581/]

The Lessig Style

I'm a fan of Stanford professor Larry Lessig. Both his presentations and the way he designs them. I first stumbled across one of his talks at the TED site, How Creativity is being Strangled by the Law. I tried to explain the power of his talks to a friend and the best I could come up with were two words: minimal and compelling.

A physicist, Chris Tunnell, wrote a nice piece about the Lessig Style. The author discusses how using these same methods have made his own presentations more popular. He listed the following keypoints of the Lessig Style.

• Minimal Text
• XML Tags
• Re-using images
• Knowing your next slide
• Blank slides

I might add only one item to the list and that is that the presentation is driven by the content. In most cases I feel like Lessig could lose the slides altogether and I would still listen. The slides support him not the other way around. The only thing I don't think I will use in my own presentations are the XML Tags. It works for him. The tags create his "style".

There are lots of Lessig presentations on the web but what I like about the TED presentation I've linked to is that you can see Lessig as he is talking. It's more like what I would expect in a classroom. You don't have to agree with him to appreciate his craftsmanship. Check him out.

[Image captured from TED talk: How Creativity is being Strangled by the Law: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187]

Planning for Presentations

Another slideshow from Rowan Mahanan about putting some thought into who your audience is before creating a presentation.

Some good tips here.

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[Image captured from slideshow "Planning to Present" by Rowan Mahanan]

Dodging Bullets

Two things happened recently that made me come to the conclusion that Powerpoint pretty much forces you to give one type of presentation. First, I was helping my wife prepare a talk for her job. Powerpoint in the way it is set up was forcing her to create the talk in a specific fashion. Multiple bullet points and a print out of the slides to give to the audience. She was used to seeing presentations like this, didn't like them, but was having a hard time breaking away from that format.

Pretty much every Powerpoint I see is built with numerous slides with lots of bullet points. The presenter reads what is on the slides. The slides are printed out and given to the audience. Every time, I walk away thinking, "why didn't they just send us the presentation and save us the time."

The second thing that influenced my viewpoint was watching this slideshow by Rowan Manahan, Dodging bullets in Presentations, where he pretty much put my thoughts into words. He takes wordy slides and shows how they can be re-created to support your presentation. The focus should almost always be you and your content. Your slides should emphasize your points. I admit there are times when data heavy presentations need to be made but there has got to be a better way than watching graph, after table, after chart projected up on a screen.

What I would like to see is a program that asks you to identify your audience, determine what type of presentation it is and then ask you to write out your script before you ever see a slide template. I'm sure I am paraphrasing one of the more knowledgeable presenters I have blogged about but my thinking is that your presentation should first be able to stand without any slides. Get to the point where you can give the talk with only a few notes. Then look at what kinds of graphics would best support or emphasize your points. If you are going to give your audience a handout, make it from scratch and don't rely on the nifty "print handouts" feature in Powerpoint.

I'll be teaching Powerpoint next year to high school freshmen and am thinking that before my students even open Powerpoint they will need to prepare a speech and give it to the class. Then, and only then, will we open the program and look at ways to enhance their speeches.

Any thoughts?

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[Image taken from the slideshow "Dodging bullets in presentations" by Rowan Manahan]

Bill vs Steve: Presentation Styles

After watching Dean Shareski's video last week on improving PowerPoint presentations, I followed one of his links to the website, Presentation Zen. Read a good post comparing the presentation styles of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. About halfway down the article there is a snapshot of the slides from each of their presentations. Gate's slides are cluttered and information dense. Jobs' are sparse yet much more appealing. Gar Reynolds, the author of the article made an interesting comment:

"Bill's slides aren't really necessary; they are more of an ornament or a decoration off to the side. Bill would have been better off just pulling up a stool and sharing his ideas and then answering questions that audience members could have submitted before the talk so that Bill could select which ones he'd answer."

This got me to thinking about presentation styles. Both these men are leaders in their industry. Yet, in their presentations, I think Jobs plays to his strengths and Gates doesn't. There is a lesson in there for educators. We need to use what works for us. The job demands that we use a variety techniques. The art of the job is playing to our strong points as often as possible.

[Image: From post 'Learning from Bill Gates and Steve Jobs"; http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2007/09/steve-bill-redu.html]

I Think It's Funny: How Not to Use Powerpoint

PowerPoint is a Multi-Purpose Tool

I wanted to comment on yesterday's post. I didn't mean to imply that PowerPoint can be used in only one way. I think it's most common use is to add some visuals to our verbosity. But, once in a while we want a presentation that can be looked at without our input. We sit down and drink a cup of coffee while the slides are set on automatic. It can have a recorded narration. It can have music. It's designed to stand alone.

I remember a PowerPoint I saw like this a few years back. It had no text, no narration and no music. It was about three minutes of photos of the Holocaust. When the last photo faded to black the speaker got up and gave his talk. It was a powerful start.

In my last school, I taught with a wonderful English teacher who has her kids create stand alone presentations built around a poem. They find images that help convey the mood of their chosen piece. Once they're done, they hit play and stand back. The words and images are the presentation.

Visit Slideshare to see a variety of presentations that are meant to stand on their own. Many of them would be too wordy or cluttered to use with a talk. That's the nature of these presentations. With no speaker to elaborate they have to stand alone.

Determine the purpose of your PowerPoint. Design with that purpose in mind. You'll end up with a better product.

A PowerPoint Isn't a Book

I was watching Powerpoint Extreme Makeover, a video by Dean Shareski and I had an "Ah-Ha" moment. He was talking about how many teachers put too much information on slides because they want to pass the presentation on to someone else. They build the presentation to stand on it's own so that anyone could take it and use it. In my mind I thought, "They want to create a reference book not a presentation." Book may not be the right word but it helped me process the concept in my own little pointy teacher head.

My worst presentations have been crowded with too much stuff. I put everything I've got in one place so I can easily find it when I need it again. I'd had more success if I made a folder for all that stuff and trimmed down my Powerpoint.

My best presentations have slides that support me. The pictures and text helped move my story along. The best piece of advice Shareski gave in the video was to start with a script. If you know what you are going to say, then you can craft your presentation around your words. Your script is the starting point and and everything refers back to that blueprint.

Keep your end purpose in mind. If you want to build a reference tool. A book. Then your product is going to look different than if you are going to be giving a presentation. If not, then maybe it should?







[Image: Book a photo at Morgue.com: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=165771&; Modified in Photoshop.]

I Think It's Funny: Gettysburg Powerpoint

What if Lincoln had a PowerPoint to go along with his speech at Gettysburg?

Death by Powerpoint

How many times have you been in an audience and the speaker puts up their PowerPoint and then says one of the following?

"I know that this is hard to read but..."

"You don't need to read this one. It's in the handouts."

"Let me read this slide to you."

After one or two of these comments, I pretty much start planning my lessons for next week, thinking about the mountains or writing spectacular poetry in the margins of my notes.

I'd like to say that I always create decent presentations, but I often fall into the trap of too little time and too much information. Improving my skill in this area is a personal goals. I guess as teachers we are constantly trying to improve our presentation skills. At least I hope that's true.

This presentation, Death By PowerPoint, has some great information.

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If you want some examples of good slide presentations watch a Steve Jobs keynote or pretty much 90% of the presentations on TED.

[Image: Derived from: Creative Commons Jan 23, 2007: Photo-Mojo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mojodenbowsphotostudio/369182865/]

HowTo: Extract pictures from a PowerPoint presentation

This dilemma came up a couple of times last year at my school. Person comes to me in a rush and wants to get a picture out of PowerPoint. In both cases, since time was an issue, I just grabbed a screenshot. I promised myself that someday I would find out how to do this, but it has never made it to the top of my to-do list.

When I stumbled across this post I thought, "Aha! I knew there had to be an easy way!" Export the PowerPoint as a web page and the pictures will all be put in a file. Simple. Easy to do.

Go to this article, Extract Pictures from PowerPoint Photo Slideshows - Simple Hack to get a detailed explanation. While you are there, browse around Digital Inspiration. You're bound to have one or two "aha" moments yourself.

"Extract Pictures from PowerPoint Photo Slideshows." Digital Inspiration. 2007. Digital Inspiration. 16 Sep 2007 .