Top tips for presenters
Following on from the previous thread in which we discussed whether the traditional conference would survive competition from the internet, I'd like to ask anyone who has ever seen or given a presentation (or workshop): What five pieces of advice would you give a teacher who is new to presenting?
I'll contribute my own top five later, but I'd love to hear what the rest of you think.
Hi Kevin
Thank you very much for your informative post.I like your comment "so why oh why do you feel the need to read it to me!".
Abdul
Hi Kevin
Thanks for your advice, it was really useful.
Yasmin
Hi Yasmin,
Thanks for your and Abdul's feedback. I think most of all the posts in this thread have really useful advice. Difficult to incorporate all of it at once though :-)
Kevin
1 Rehearse your presentation, preferably in front of colleagues.
2 Stick to what you have said you are going to say.
3 Don't worry too much about the audience - they are on your side.
4 Don't start with the sentence - "Technology never works for me ..."
5 Enjoy the experience.
Bang on. Gave my first talk last year and followed this advice: had the time of my life.
OK, here's my top 5.
1. Know what you're talking about and why
2. PowerPoint is a dangerous weapon - take care
3. Tell a story
4. Make the audience laugh, even if its only on the inside
5. Finish on time
That's it.
Happy Saturday!
For me it's all about audience:
1. give your audience the impression that they are the most important people in the world and you really need to talk to them and get their feedback
2. don't teach at them - they are intelligent people and don't like being patronised
3. work out what you need to explain to them - not because they don't know but because a lot of ideas are contested and you need to be clear to them what your take on a concept is
4. don't be pompous - talk to them in the way you would if you met each person individually at a party
5. the best speakers leave you with the feeling that they were talking to you personally.
Hi Olwyn
Thank you. Your advice about the audience is insightful.
Yasmin
The five points which work for me are:
1 know what he or she is really talking about;
2 begin by making people interact by means of questions about the topic to be presented
3 look at many different people in the audience and not at few ones;
4 keep a friendly tone;
5 relax to have fun with it
Olga from Brazil.
I've just started doing seminars and workshops, and on some subconscious level I feel that the following tips work for me:
1. Be well prepared (both in terms of knowledge and materials);
2. Make it fun (though it depends on the type of presenteation you give and the audience you have);
3. Involve "students" as much as possible. Make trainees feel that they are discovering things for themselves;
4. Make it varied (In some ways I still think of my seminars as lessons, e.g. I try to vary interaction patterns, involve different skills etc.);
5. Be (or at least try to seem) confident.
I agree with much of what has been said. My top 5 would be:
1. Study the topic you'll be presenting on as much as possible. This will help you to feel confident when delivering the workshop/talk.
2. Arrive well in advance to prepare the materials and check all the technology is working fine. Once all has been set up, start greeting participants as they come in and start talking to them to find out where they come from, why they are there, etc. This is useful information to see whether you need to adapt what you have to say.
3. Allow the audience to participate. I usually make my presentations and workshops interactive. And when you ask a question, allow enough time for thinking before you provide an answer yourself. Muchin the same way as in a usual class, avoid filling in silences. People need to think before they speak! :-)
4. Plan the first 10 to 15 minutes very well and rehearse them as much as possible. A good start will make you confident and the rest of the presentation will be fine.
5. Quote your sources. This will enable participants to get further information on the topic if they wish to and you will be showing them you have prepared the presentation well.
Couldn't agree more with your second point, especially regarding the technology. I've been caught out a few times by technological issues, even when I thought I was prepared for anything (my own laptop, off-line versions of the webpages I wanted to show, etc.) There's simply no substitute for turning up an hour or so beforehand.
And of course getting there early will help you with my fifth point!
Agreed! Finishing on time and achieving the aims of your presentation are crucial. If you can't finish on time that probably means you have not achieved all your aims. It's like not achiving the aims of a lesson you have taught . . .
As regards timing, I usually estimate a few more minutes than what seems logical for each activity / part of the presentation just in case. I finish before time, I always have something up my sleeve. And it's always better to finish a few minutes earlier and leave some room for questions than not finishing on time.
Reading through the posts here, I was reminded of another point.
6. Be completely honest
I say this because of one of my own most embarrassing moments presenting a workshop. I was doing a "10 top tips for..." kind of thing, and, when I'd been preparing it, I was kind of struggling to find a really good tenth tip. All the other 9 were things I'd done in the classroom, various times, but I'd recently come across a great idea I really wanted to try out. I felt it was a great last tip, so I stuck it in the workshop.
It was a great idea, but in retrospect rather complex and impractical, and when someone asked me the direct question: "Have you ever actually done this with students?", I freely admitted that I hadn't (yet), but by that point it was too late. All I had had to do was preface the last point with a comment that this was something that I was keen to try, but my failure to do so, my letting the room believe I was talking from experience of doing that activity as I had been previously... Well, it cast doubt on everything else.
Of course, perhaps I was the only one in the room who felt that way. But the feeling convinced me that being completely honest and forthright with the audience is the best policy. I try to incorporate that into my teaching, too, with mixed success. I'm not sure that a teacher who provides a disclaimer ("This is not the full story") with every pedagogical rule is what learners really want. But it helps me sleep at night :)
Thank you all for good pieces of advice on presentation.
I completely agree with Mark as one of my tips is as well honesty, which I would like to share.
1. Make a good introduction and conclusion to leave a good impression.
2. Be careful of your non-verbal communivation.
3. Make sure what you say and how you say is understood by the audience.
4. Be ready and confident to answer question from the audience.
5. Use your common sense when not in position to answer a question or simply be honest.
Samjhana from Nepal
:-)
When I was writing my 5 tips I had written one which I later erased:
Be yourself! Don't try to imitate another presenter's style. Be honest and "preach what you practice." Being authentic will help you to establish a nice rapport with the audience, which will boost your confidence and will help you to look more credible.
thanks guys..
the tips are very useful for me develop my competence in teaching at class and I will share some of mine
1. be ready with my material
2. be confidence to approach student by trying to know their own
situation at that time or involve myself
3. believe that they must be able to get the point that you deliver
4. give them an opportunity to express their opinion by giving them a
sample
5. give feedback to all participants who involve in the program
Don't know if I will manage five as I am suffering from sleep deprivation, but mine are pretty basic. The number one is certainly: make sure you maintain the link between your title and your content. I have so often gone to presentations and workshops where it has turned out that the link was tenuous at best, and at worst it was a case of having a trendy title to get bums on seats that has no connection to the actual content.
Second would be to make sure you communicate the level of knowledge, skill, etc. the presentation is aimed at. There is nothing worse than going to a presentation where the subject matter is either much too basic or much too advanced for you.
Third, get the timing right. Time and again I attend presentations where the presenter clearly had not practiced the timing and, usually, has too much to say in the time allowed.
Which brings me to the fourth one: if you can skip eight slides due to lack of time, they shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Finally, please, please, please, don't read me the text on the slide! I can read, presumably the text is on the slide so I can have the opportunity to read it, so why oh why do you feel the need to read it to me!
There, I got five points :-)
Kevin