As I was going through my reader this morning, I ran across this post, Presentation Zen: Tokonoma and the art of the focal point. About half way down the post there are some examples of ways to change the presentation of information. I’ve been thinking/working on a number of presentations for this year and I’ve been really trying to move away from text heavy sites and use pictures to illustrate my points rather than relying on text. This isn’t new information and I don’t know that I necessarily do it well yet, but my thought process has definitely changed.
Here is an example of one of my slides. I don’t have a before, but what I wanted to do with this is create interest without overwhelming with text. I went on to talk about the importance of story when it comes to video creation in the classroom.
Here is another example from the same presentation. In this one I decided that rather than list all the next steps in regards to our upcoming film festival, I wanted to illustrate stepping stones as I discussed them.
I’m not convinced that this is necessarily the best way to approach this, but I definitely like having less text as a part of my presentations and having my explanation be what drives the content.
Here is the entire presentation.
Reflections, presentations, projects
Today was the first day of the Midwest Education Technology Conference in St. Louis, MO. I’m actually on the board for this conference and really enjoy being a part of the planning process. The day started with Will Richardson’s keynote. I’ve always enjoyed Will’s writings and presentations. Imagine my surprise when he referenced NCTE’s Framework for 21st Century Literacies, a document that I helped to author as a part of NCTE’s Executive Board. After the session I went and introduced myself and had a nice chat before another session. One thing that he said that I really liked was that his kids were his lens to his involvement in education. Since my kids will be attending the school district in which I work, I have a similar feeling and a vested interest in the district as a whole. I also presented two sessions today. The first, “Cool Tool Duel,” was a collaborative effort of 6 technology integrators in which we all presented 2 tools to the audience. Unfortunately, Animoto chose the time I was presenting and showing their site off to do a little server maintenance. After I logged in, the site actually said, “Went to get a beer, brb.” This got lots of laughs and completely lightened up the mood.
My second presentation, “Instructional Strategies for a Digital World,” was one that I’ve presented in the past about my time in the classroom and my efforts to create a “paperless classroom.” I changed the presentation considerably this time because I wanted to tell a story about my experience rather than just explain the concept and how “I” did it. I wanted my audience to understand “why” I did it that way. I think it went well and I enjoyed the session. I ended my day in another of Will Richardson’s sessions and then a brief sharing session with Meg Ormiston. After dinner and drinks with DEN and some new Twitter friends, I finally braved the snowy roads and made my way home. School is canceled for tomorrow so after dropping off the kids at childcare, it’s back to another day of METC with one final presentation.
21st Century Education, NCTE, Online Apps, PLN, Professional Development, metc09, presentations
