Preparing to present: a new approach

Recently, a number of things have got me thinking about the visual aspects of the presentations I give. And I was inspired to try out a new approach to preparing the slides for my next talk.

In a Facebook discussion about tips for newbie presenters, someone mentioned the impact that visuals can have; a picture speaks a thousand words and all that. That got me thinking that I rarely use visuals and maybe I could include some more.

Then I read a really interesting article that suggested that when teachers use text-heavy slides in class, students actually retain less of the information. The article explains that this is because the overload of information (written on the slides plus the teacher's commentary) can just be confusing, so neither source quite hits home. The article was about high-school students (not especially ELT), but I wondered whether the same principles might apply to conference presentations.

Now, of course, I already try not to overload my slides with lots of text, but as someone who talks primarily about language, it's a bit difficult to get away from altogether. Never one to shy away from a challenge though, I thought I'd try and give it a go.

This weekend I've been putting together a talk for an EAP conference in St Andrews at the end of the month. I realized I couldn't quite wean myself off words altogether, but I've completely abandoned my usual style of slides with bullet points of the key points and gone for a very low-text alternative. Here's a taster ...

If any of you are in St Andrews and come along to my session, I'd be really interested to get your feedback on how the slides work out. Did you like the visuals or were you yearning for some old-skool bullet points?!

Simple video presentations using PowerPoint

Last week, I saw a really interesting short webinar by Jonathan Smith from the University of Reading about making presentational videos using PowerPoint (as part of the Learning Technology in EAP evening of webinars; recording available here). He was talking about making short videos about language points à la flipped classroom; so his students could watch them in their own time.

As the idea of the flipped classroom (either as a full-on approach or just as an occasional tool) has gathered momentum, I’ve become more convinced that it’s a useful addition to any teacher’s repertoire.  As ever with new technologies though, it always seems that you need a certain amount of time and techy know-how to start making your own video presentations. The idea of using an application that I’m already familiar with really appealed, so I thought I’d give it a go:

I’m not doing any teaching at the moment, but I’ll look forward to trying this out on the next unsuspecting group of students I do get my hands on. I’ve also been mulling over the idea of using this to make mini-summaries of presentations I do. That could be in the form of a short trailer before an event or it could be a brief overview to pass on afterwards.

Whenever I speak at an event or do some kind of workshop, someone always asks me if I can make my slides available. This can be problematic for a number of reasons. Because I use slides quite sparingly and can talk around a couple of bullet points for maybe 10 minutes, the slides on their own can be a bit meaningless. That’s fine if someone attended the session and just wants the slides as a reminder, but if they get passed on, it’s easy for them to be misinterpreted. Plus, if you plan to give a similar version of a talk at several events, you don’t always want the content shared around.

So I can envisage making a mini-summary of my session using a few key slides and just talking through the main ideas. That way there’s less chance of misinterpretation and also you’re not giving away all your best material!