OLLIE Iowa

Potential Answer for the identified challenge?

Discussed in the OLLIE: Instructional Design course.

This is a key element in a successful presentation...planning, preparing, and delivering a presentation that involves a topic I am passionate about makes it seem like a lot less work. 

So true. I have been presenting on a topic that is quiet new to me, and it has taken so much more effort to plan. Working on my Zen presentation has been so much easier as it is a topic I feel I have depth of knowledge in, and see direct outcomes from. I get excited and I hope my audience gets excited too.

I just learned this last year! How did I go so many years without knowing this?  Also if you push "W" your screen will go white 

Last year!?! I just learned this now! Can't wait to use it!

Yes, I can totally see how this would be good to use. I wasn't aware of it....

This is a great idea to actually look into resources that challenge the topic/perspective. Rather than just having my opinion about something, I could spend some time looking into those alternative stances

This is a good reminder to break longer presentations into smaller pieces. I try to integrate playtime into some presentations, but now I am thinking that I need to make them shorter and occur more often. 

Agre! When co presenting it is much easier as you can hand off the presentation and change it up just by who is speaking. When going solo this seems even more important.

This is hard to believe the content impact is so small. It definitely makes e think that i need to pay attention to my delivery style. I really dislike watching myself on video, but the hint to tape myself and reflect is probably a good one. 

Wow this is scary. I agree with it, but amazing to think about. It make me think about our recent round of teacher interviews. Our teachers are really particular about what the candidates wear. They would tell you, that if a women is not in a suit, they are literally tuned out the rest of the interview. 

I love doing this in my classroom. I feel it gives me better classroom behavior. They never know where I am going to be. I also love that it allows me to hear some of the students who like to dwell in the back row and mumble their thoughts. I can now ask them to share that amazing thought louder.  

Just make sure that the remote you have isn't the same one as someone next door. I have had a couple of presentations to students and my neighboring teacher was also presenting. This created a very interesting back and forth. 

I wish my students would do this too. I tell them to practice, but at the end of the day it seems we all practice a couple of times and call it good. If we really wanted to do well, we would do the 10:1 ratio. 

I just can't imagince having the time to do this and I would hate to make it an expectation of someone else if I couldn't do it myself.

Sounds like a lot of time, but I know from presenting that it makes good sense. Don't know how student would react to this!

I would almost prefer there was no text on the slide. I see a lot of presenters putting quotes on the slides. They turn around to read them and I feel like I am completely disconnected. Or if they are on the slide and aren't ever mentioned, I am confused why they had it there if they aren't going to address it. I have to disengage with the presentation to read it. In reality, there are times for text, but it seems that it needs to be connected and present in the presentation.

I have done this several times and I hated it! I found so much about myself that I was annoyed with. I couldn't believe how irritated I was with myself. I felt like I should apologize to my students for putting up with me everyday. It was horrible, but good. There were some behaviors, as Gallo notes, that I didn't know I had. I was then more thoughtful about them and have since strived to fix them. Although it is awkward, I would highly suggest it. You can't argue with a camera.  

This has completely changed how I present and I love how it helps me to circulate around the audience.

I like to keep in mind that the audience won't remember the challenging person, but will remember how I handled them.

I have really been able to improve on this now that I'm making the focus of my slide be the image.

I wonder if it's possible to be vulnerable at the same time? I think the audience(in my case teachers), needs to know that I empathize with them and care about them, but yet I have high expectations for our students. I am often very vulnerable and I feel most appreciate it. 

This is typically where I try to include humor, tell a story, and try to set the stage for our time together. 

So important. Recently, a comment was made as teachers were sharing out and I made a very bad mistake. I actually rolled my eyes. Now I don't know if anyone seen me, but just as soon as I did it I was very self-concious. Not good.

Pretty much everything thing that I present on or co-present is as a result of discussions and decisions made by our Instructional Leadership Team. But the reality is that I hope they are being honest with me and not just agreeing to my thoughts or ideas on how to improve our instruction for students. 

I value the input of the ILT so that hopefully what we are asking or presenting on is not seen as just the principal asking for one more thing. There are very few things that I would push forward with without the support of our leadership team. I might however continue to building the background of the leadership team in hopes that one day I feel that we are at a point to share with our entire staff. 

Very good point. If I know our time is going to be longer I always like to build in opportunities for sharing, collaboration, reading, etc. so that it doesn't feel like I was talking at them for an hour. 

Obviously I responeded before I read further. :)

This is definitely an area that I would need to improve in. Sometimes I get over confident, only to wake up in the middle of the night with all of these ideas that I think I can work into my presentation without practice...In other situations I have literally just completed the presentation an then it's time to present. This is something I need to contemplate, the planning phase, because if I'm not ready will I actually make the situation worse. 

Sometimes we forget the presenting part of the presentation. It is something very different than the preparation of slides. Yes, when I remember presenters, I remember their voice, how they moved around the space, the jokes they told, and the way they made me feel. I really don't remember the slides, I remember the info. through the person who presented it.

Reminds me of the importance of the high school speech classes where all of these skills are taught.

Do people seriously do this??

This is a good rule of thumb, I think that is why the visual on the page is so important to help quickly understand the content.

I really like this as well. I have such a difficult time figuring out what text to include. This will definitely help me to minimize and focus on what's really important.

This is a good point when thinking about trying to get closer to the "six words per slide" rule. Keeping in mind the key details can help decrease the use of words that are not needed.

Great idea! After deciding the important details on a slide, rather than just including those find a visual that represents what the bullet points would have siad. The presenter will still have to explain what the visuals mean, but that should happen anyway, much bettter than sentences next to bullet points!

I like this, but also wonder if it is too noisey. Do you think it could be divided into several slides of reasons, or does that become too many slides?

I'm embarassed to admit this, but it had never occured to me to prepare a handout other than a copy of the slides until this course.

So, this example is pretty extreme in how bad it is, but I'm really starting to dislike anything clipart. It seems it is never appropriate.

Wow. This anecdote makes the point very clear: The presentation is to aid the presenter, not replace the presenter.

Another issue I have seen with color is the projector. I have seen a lot of pretty presentations that were turned horrible by the projector. My principle was trying to promote some school spirit and had his slide in school colors (purple background and yellow text). Purple backgrounds were turned pure black when projected. It looked ok, but the point was completely missed. I think it is important to keep it simple and test it out if I can before I give it to help prevent that issue. 

This makes me think of my dear education professor in college. He was 70 something and loved teaching. He tried so hard to keep up with the times, and he must have had someone show him the audio buttons because every slide in his presentations would have a different sound effect. It wasn't really engaging, just annoying. But, we all knew how hard he worked and that he truly loved teaching. 

This view will also be more effective without all of the bullets and large chunks of text. 

This is one of the biggest struggles I have will use full background images. The text doesn't pop like I want it to. I like the idea of adding in the transparent box. 

This is where I feel I get stuck. I want them to be more engaging then this, but I also don't want to have simply concept pictures. 

I think this would be really effective if you reveal them as you talk about them creating that flow of content. I know when I first looked at this slide I started to try and understand the meaning of each photo. I would have to force myself as an audience member to wait for the presenter to explain them. 

Good to keep in mind. It is not about you or the images you choose, or the words we use. It is about the audience and having them on the journey with us.

I am excited to present with this point in mind. I know it will be different, but I think it will be a good different.

I am still thinking about this. How much is too much? This statement of what you might see on the evening news is helpful. I do think some animation, like fade, does make it flow and perhaps more interesting, but you can definately have too much of a good thing.

I have certainly been gulity of this. How small can I make the font to get it all to fit on one slide. Find the main message and clear away the rest.

Keep it simple. Over and over, probably the most powerful message throughout. I really think they made the point with the bill board analogy.

Very good point. On Wednesday when I presented I had a very minimal powerpoint, 12 total slides for the hour. But I was talking, sharing stories, had humor, and had plenty of table discussions. Slowly I can get better at this

Great example. Rather like painting. You want to have the eye move from one spot to the other, dicovering your message as they go. Nice!

I think this is important for images as well as text. I need to keep in mind that sometimes just having the words on a slide can be as powerful as an image.

We always need to keep in mind that the presentation and slides are for the audience, not the presenter. If we need a teleprompter than we don't know the material enough to be presenting.

I'm learning slowly. This morning in a presentation, I still had one slide that was heavy in text. For a split second I almost starting reading, but then I paused and let staff read it to themselves. Then we went on. I survived.

Do you need the bulleted list at all in the below slide? The magazine cover would serve as the reminder to both the presenter and audience on the main topics. 

For several years our district required us to use "approved" powerpoint templates. At first I thought they were kind of cool, I was proud of the district for being so professional right! But as I developed more and more presentations, it was sometimes hard to fit all the text on the slides I wanted. Well...now I know better, both the templates and the extensive text are not appropriate. We pretty much use google presentations now so I need to learn more about using blank templates within google. 

It totally understand this and given my art and computer background I know I could do this. However, I am a long way from seeming to have time to do this when some of our presentations are literally being built leading right up to the presentation...Planning is key

So if there are times where it might be ok to use clip art, would it be recommended to use clip art throughout the presentation rather than switching between photos/images and clipart?

Not that I want to use any clip art...

This kind of answers my question from the end of the previous article...consistency is good. 

The white space was one of the things I liked about using Prezi.

I have never considered the amount of light in the room and how that might affect the presentation. I will have to experiment with lights on and lights off to see if I can detect any difference.

really like the simplicity of this slide and how powerful that percentage becomes by enlarging the font and minimizing the amount of words.

How many times have I seen students use the same old graphics in presentations? I need to direct them to other sources, such as some of the ones available through Heartland. How do you help them find unique graphics (or not to be satisfied with using the same graphics as everyone else)?

I think this is important, I have recently tried incorporating storytelling into my presentations, letting the audience know how I got to where I am in my journey with the topic and why it is something I am passionate about. This ties in with the idea of striking the emotional side of the audience mentioned in the other article.

I feel like this was one of my biggest ah ha's. I love stories and hearing the presenters story is always engaging. When I have shared a story in class, it has students attention, they interact, ask questions, volunteer information. When we are working through slides, I feel llike I need to sing and dance to hold their attentions. Stories are powerful! I have just not ever considered it as a presentaion method.

I think it is important to note that PowerPoint is a tool that can be used effectively, but just simply having a PowerPoint doesn't make it purposeful just through using it. The design of a presentation includes multiple facets, the visual presentation is just one of them.

The key lies in what is the purpose of the presentation and how does the tool(powerpoint) aid in the purpose.

I am a fan of acryonyms when they are easy to recall, I like that all of these are described below in more detail, but the "memory" word describes it well enough to trigger what you should remember when designing presentations.

I think this becomes difficult in many settings educationally because the focus has always been on a away to help visual learners gather information. They are often used to be a note guide or a resource to refer back to. I wonder if the shift to being able to screencast would help this. I also wonder about how it leaves out the visual, non-auditory learners. I also think that as a resource, it is less effective if there is an audio track because then the viewer has more to sift through. But it is perhaps more effective as a teaching tool because they can use it to re-teach. Perhaps it is more about purpose matching the delivery. 

Somewhere along the presentation education line, these things get mixed up. When giving a presentation, there should only be key words to cue the speaker or drive a point home. I think that the concept of "cue the speaker" has lead to all of the text. We feel unprepared and this becomes a crutch. I think this is what most of my student struggle with. Although, this course is mostly focused on the teacher, as a high school English teacher, I think these concepts should be taught to our students as well.

I completely agree. I think it has been drilled into people to use the text as cues on what to talk about, but I think this has become misleading and has led to text on the slides that detracts from the presentation rather than add to it.

I love this idea! This would keep your audience engaged in the presentation and allow them to not worry about if they have all of the bullet points written down word for word for the text. This would allow the information to flow faster because you don't have to provide wait time.  

This makes it a lot more work too, but it is worth it if the information stays with them. They will remember the power of your presentation. They also will feel that they have missed something if they weren't present. 

It also saves you from having to present or follow-up later to go over the same information!

I think that sometimes this could be negative part of a presentation. The key here is to create something unexpected that directly connects to what you are talking about and proves your message. Often, I see people pulling something out just to break up the presentation and to give them a mind break. It is important to wrap those things together (mind break and message) to really get this aspect accomplished. 

I think the key here is the word "element." I have been part of presentations where you are there to hear about and idea, and they end up telling you story after story. They are loosely connected, but I find myself disengaged with the content and the focus because I am wondering "how many of the "rabbit trails" we are going to go on?" I think you should use stories to help with concepts and examples, keeping them short and to the point.  

I think it's particularly hard in education, as we don't often have the "whole story" about a students success as they leave us and transition to another stage in their life. Teacher or student success stories are powerful and touch our hearts. For implementing new practices/techniques, or strategies, a true life story from a teacher is always more powerful.

I found this so interesting and it can be counterintuitive, but the more I thought about it the more I reflected on how often I completely tune out as a result of seeing and hearing the same content (ie someone reading their powerpoint slide)

This was a stand out to me as weel. The more I thought about it the more I agreed with it. When I have bene presented to, it is extreamly distracting to try to read a slide while someone else is reading it out loud.

In education, it's often about what is the implementation piece associated with the presentation/learning/ etc. How do we hold ourselves accountable for the information presented

I really struggle with this. I'm never sure how technical to get with my language as I want the audience to feel comfortable with the content, but not feel like I am "talking down to them"

I really need to work on this one and spend some time coming up with better examples, stories, and analogies in my presentations to make things more concrete.

This is so true. I think it's critical on how you set up the audience for what the purpose is, how this will help/impact them, and what they will/should walk away with.

Kind of shocking actually. The second slide??? All the more reason to ne mindful of what you are sharing.

I too am guilty of this. I sometimes feel that what I have to say on a topic is so important that it can't wait or that I have to include it. As a principal, I've had to learn to be disciplined to sometimes save my thoughts when others are presenting and not interrupt their presentations for my own sake of speaking!

I do feel that I try to connect with teachers emotionally. I am very vulnerable in my communication with teachers. I don't want to be known as the expert and thus I engage a lot of teachers to be with me in presenting, sharing, modeling, etc. Acknowledge how busy we know they all are, but surround it with how important our new learning is for the benefit of students.

Speaking to the diagram allows one to have their own thoughts, and consider the presenters ideas I beleive without the overload suggested by reaing the slide to them. I like the idea of an image that gets to the emotion or the concept that you are trying to get across.

I love this! Of course anything done in the sand this time of the year in Iowa seems like a GREAT idea. I know I am guilty of starting with the slide and not the overall concept. It is so easy to rearrange slides in power point that is it ewasy to get caught up in headfirst jumping.

Yep! save it until the end. How many conferences have you been to that people stick their head in the door, grab a copy of your slides, handout, whatever, and turn around and head out. If they could sit and listen knowing they will get materials at the end, I believe they will have a better learning experience.

Easier said than done, but how very important! I know this is one that I will be giving lots of thought to.

I kinda shudder when I think about how many presentations I have given that are 30, 40 even 50 slides long (in a day long class) and how overwhelmed people must be. I like that it lays out what the ten topics are, but I would be interested to know what this would look like with education topics.

I agree that it would be very interesting to see what this list would be in education topics. I wonder if you would need a broader scope too because of the different audiences. I also wonder about our students and how they are handling even 10 slides perhaps 8 times a day depending on their workload! 

This is a good point. We consider just our audience for our presentation, but what if they are absorbing presentations all day long?

When I wrote the list of 10 down, I wondered what the translation from business model to education might look like. Anyone give it a shot?

This is good to realize that it can be a heavy subject or a non fiction topic and still be covered through the format of storytelling. If our brains naturally gravitate towards stories, then the audience is automatically at a higher level of engagement.

I am guilty of this. In previous articles, it also highlighted the importance of restraint in information, but I struggle to identify what is and isn't important to someone else.

Me too. It is hard to say "this is important, but not something I need to tell them."

This resonates with me because I have always found myself scrambling to find images in the past to fit a slide without really purposely planning what the image should be. My focus was the reverse of what it should have been. I should be focusing on what image to use to illustrate the content.

I find this quote funny as we used to joke all the time in graduate school that you could make stats say anything you wanted. I think people look at numbers and just take them to be the truth without realizing that number can be manipulated as well.

This is a theme that I'm seeing throughout the course and probably one of my biggest take aways as I have always thought of visuals as a compliment to the text on the screen rather than being the primary focus.

This takes practice. I'm better at this, but even when I pick really stunning visuals and use them full-slide like we'll look at in our next section, that doesn't mean that they reinforce the message I'm trying to send.

This is hard in a classroom. Especially if the powerpoint is being used to give concepts or information. I completely understand the concept from a true presentation standpoint, but I wonder about what it looks like as an educational tool for students.

I have found that this also works when you are trying to explain a concept to a struggling student. If you can give them a story they can understand (be it true or not) the brain can catch on to it faster and make sense of the concept. Truly powerful!

My department has added in a unit on documentary and bias to get to this very point. The idea is that they are telling the story they want to tell. They have little-to-no obligation to tell us the truth. Stories are used to make us think and decided what we think is right or wrong. They are a conversation starter, not a conclusion. Thus, if we were to end out presentation with a story, we perhaps would begin the conversation for them to have after the presentation is over. It could be very powerful. 

I wonder if this is why the presentations in the educational world struggle so much. For the most part, they are used to give information or data. Then the discussion comes based off of that. I sat through 3 presentations today that did just that. I find myself struggling with the two concepts of zen and content. What is the balance that is truly needed?

The weird thing is, we don't teach like that in our classes, do we? I mean, yeah, we all know of that boring lecturer, but that's more of a college professor thing than a common high school teacher thing. You would think education presentations would be more "fluffy touchy feely" without any tangible data/information than the other way around, but you'd be wrong.

If I can get to this point, I will feel successful. I have been reflecting on the presentation that I am working on, and realized when I am teaching students I have done this, but not intentionally. I plan to use a personal story that demonstrates the power of the information I will be presenting. What I am finding challenging is selecting the "right" image to show the emotion I want to invoke. Since this is content that I am very familar with, I am not concerned about bullets, or list of info, but I feel the challenge of getting it all flowing.

I love it! I am going to play this game in class, how old are you, wait a minute, slides adjusted to "correct" font. Seriously, in adult education this is a big issue. No one wants to admit that they can't read the slides because the font is too small. Ego?

This reminds me of learning targets: What do we want students to know/do? How will we get them there? How will we know when they get there? (This is the second time I have tried to post this comment. The first one was much better composed! Learning curve...)