The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy January 23, 2010 Better Presentations


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The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy
January 23, 2010
Better Presentations

"The customer is always right" may have become a standard motto in the world of business, but the idea that "the audience is always right" has yet to make much of an impression on the world of presentation, even though for the duration of the presentation at least, the audience is the speaker's only customer.

Max Atkinson

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what makes presentations "good" in this day and age, especially with Powerpoint (and its limitations) dominating how most people present ideas to large or unfamiliar audiences. We're buried in print information in our lives, from the books on our shelves to the blogs and websites we browse. Most presentations are heavily text-based, too.

The best presentation I went to last year was ninety minutes long, and included over 150 slides. There were virtually no words (save for those which showed up in photos) and no bullet points at all - just powerful ideas strung together by a series of remarkable stories. Three months after that presentation, the main points stay with me, and come unbidden to mind every so often.

Winter and spring is the presentation season in schools, with literacy leaders charged with explaining everything from why programs should be spared the budget ax to school boards, to launching schoolwide literacy celebrations where the year's learning is chronicled. If your powerpoints drown your audiences in words and tiny fonts, it's probably time to rethink them.

Guy Kawasaki, an entrepreneur who had a leading role in the early days of Apple, has some simple advice for anyone designing a presentation in 2010. His 10/20/30 rule requires that there be:

1. No more than 10 slides of information;

2. 20 minutes total time for the presentation; and

3. No font smaller than 30 point used on the slides.

Following this template is more than a challenge if you're accustomed to sharing slide after slide full of bullets and text. Even if you can't quite cull your ideas down to fit the 10/20/30 rule, you'll still push yourself to rely less on the screen, and more on your interaction with the people in front of you. I would add that there needs to be at least one amazing story in the mix - an anecdote that leaves your audience laughing till it hurts, or shaking their heads in astonishment. It's the story, or stories, that will make your 10/20/30 points stick.

This week we're featuring a guide to creating comprehension constructors from the Choice Literacy Archives. Plus more as always - enjoy!

Brenda Power
Editor, Choice Literacy

Free for All

"Comprehension Constructor" is a term coined by Cris Tovani to explain different response guides developed by teachers to support thoughtful reading. This eGuide from the Choice Literacy Archives includes quick tips for designing your own comprehension constructors, as well as a few sample templates:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/219.cfm

The Presentation Zen website has many remarkable examples of short presentations to get you rethinking yours. Garr Reynolds posts links to strong presentations, as well as critiques of how the words and images could be tweaked to have even more impact:

http://www.presentationzen.com/

If your students are always confusing there/their and forever spelling "a lot" as one word, you may want to check out Roy Peter Clark's advice on creating "The List" in your classroom. It's a simple strategy for highlighting common mistakes in student writing communities, and giving students a strategy for checking their work independently:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=78&;aid=173930

In Making the Implicit Explicit, Kim Cofino of the Always Learning blog considers the essential technology knowledge students need to navigate the web - things like an underline under text (or when the words are lit up) mean you can click on them to discover a new link. She includes a terrific flowchart to share with family members showing the roadmap for finding information at almost any website. This post would be a great starting point for a staff discussion of how and when to teach basic web surfing skills:

http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2009/12/10/making-the-implicit-explicit/

Our 2010 Choice Literacy Summer and Fall Workshops are filling rapidly. Last year our most popular events sold out even before our print mailing went out in March, so don't miss the boat. You can download flyers and registration forms with descriptions of our workshops in Texas, Ohio, Washington, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, and Florida at this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department22.cfm

For Members Only

Our latest cluster is on Using Picture Books with Older Students, with contributions from Katie Doherty, Aimee Buckner, and Franki Sibberson:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/1067.cfm

Julie Johnson and her colleagues take on the challenge of becoming a model writing school. In this article, Julie describes the process of moving from work in the National Writing Project to voluntary year-long study groups at her school:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/1069.cfm

We've posted the second video in our two-part series from Franki Sibberson. The Nonfiction Word Hunt integrates vocabulary learning into independent reading, building interest in words throughout the day. In this installment, Franki confers with students and then reconvenes the class:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/776.cfm

Finally, if you missed a few weeks of the Big Fresh late in the fall because of the flurry of holiday activities and vacation, you can always catch up on back issues at the Big Fresh Archives link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department62.cfm

That's all for this week!