After a short TED Talk ‘fast’, I’ve started devouring these amazing talks again, and this 5 minute appetizer was sensational.
William Kamkwaba is a young African man who harnessed the power of wind to help feed his family and transform his small village. In this short presentation he shares his inspirational story.
What fascinates me is that William was able to give an engaging and motivational talk without having so much as a high school education. Most people who are inexperienced presenters tend to use the same crutches: default PowerPoint themes, bullet points, notes, few pictures. But not William. Notice the simplicity of his slides. Many of them are full-bleed photographs. He doesn’t use bullet points and he speaks in a natural, conversational tone. Most importantly, his message comes from the heart. Building windmills, and engineering in general, is something that he loves.
William shows that you do not need to be a trained and experienced public speaker to present well. If you are a teacher or university professor, there are a few simple things that you can do to improve your presentations or lectures.
As I’ve worked with teachers to redesign their lecture slides and presentations, I’ve come to the realization that a lot of the time slides aren’t necessary. At least, not for every point that you want to make.
This point was validated when I watched a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson at the Apple Higher Education Leadership Summit.
In his traditional conversational style, he gave an entertaining speech on the role of Information Systems in the university. He discussed the concept of creativity and how many people believe they just aren’t creative. Then, he told a story about a rare season of rain in Death Valley and the flowerful spring that followed and referenced the one and only slide from his talk, which contained a photograph of Death Valley covered in wild flowers. He explained that, just as life was dormant in “Death” Valley, everyone is creative whether they have discovered their creative ability or not.
I was floored. What a way to emphasize a point. Moreover, what an incredible talk that utilized only one slide at the opportune moment.
I just came across this video that I watched quite a while ago. It’s a humorous take on the very serious problem of PowerPoint misuse. I like it because, personally, I am so passionate about the need to rethink slides that I think others may be taken aback at first.
Humor helps people relax. They become less defensive and allow themselves to be a little more vulnerable. This, in turn, helps them to be more open to change.
Watch the video and see how easy it is to agree with Don.
According to Don McMillan, here is a humorous & yet insightful viewpoint on how people (teachers included) should not be using PowerPoint.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone said that about your presentation? What if your next lecture excited a student so much that they just couldn’t wait to get home and do something about it?
I can tell you that it probably won’t happen using traditional lecture slides and the monologue-like teaching style. It takes emotion to make someone feel like they “must finish by acting.”
I recently watched this video on TED.com and was terribly excited by it. I don’t know anything about comics, and I don’t care to learn anything about them, but what excited me so much was the way in which Scott McCloud presented on comics.
His presentation style actually resembles a comic strip in many ways. Heavily – nay, almost exclusively – based on visuals, Scott uses full bleed images to illustrate key points or even single words as he is speaking. At times he speaks a sentence naturally as he rapidly steps through a series of images for each of the words (pay attention at 2 min 15 sec to see what I mean).
Scott’s presentation is also in the form of a story. He talks about the influence of his father in his life and also explains the history of comics in an entertaining and flowing narrative. And yet his presentation is also very informative and includes a lot of important concepts and even facts.
I look at this presentation and dream of the day that I come across a professor using this format in a lecture. Mind you, by no means would I encourage any professor to adopt this lecture style exclusively (unless the course were on story telling), but, it is an excellent tool to employ once in a semester or to provide a change-up in the lecture.
