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3 Smart Tips for Presentation Coaches

April 2, 2015 10:00 by
Pamla J. Eisenberg

Photo credit: Pamla J. Eisenberg, published under CC

If you are a presentation coach or trainer, these 3 smart tips are for you. Each tip focuses on a different stage in the coaching process:

  • Preparation
  • Execution
  • Evaluation

Let’s dive right into the first presentation coaching tip.

Meet Your Drill Sergeant: Your Smartphone

Practice makes perfect, and there’s nobody better at forcing you to practice than a drill sergeant. So get out your smartphone and use it to film yourself while you practice your presentation. As a presentation coach, tell your trainees to do the presentation over and over again, until they feel they can show it to you. Have them use their smartphone as a camera. All smartphones have the option to share videos. So tell them to send over their best video for your feedback.

Drive Your Point Home with A Convincing Video

Switching to a short video during your talk can be very engaging. For instance, YouTube videos serve as great material to illustrate a point. Did you know you can start a YouTube video from within a PowerPoint presentation? To do that you have to embed the YouTube video in your presentation. Here’s a short guide, but, inevitably, there are also YouTube videos about embedding YouTube videos. Here’s an instructive one:

Use Twitter to Get Feedback

Did you just speak at a conference? Chances are that at least half the audience was using their smartphone or even their laptop. Don’t take that as a sign of disinterest. On the contrary, they were probably reviewing your speech. Not for the New York Times of course, but for their friends, coworkers and other peers. The most common way to do that is through Twitter.

twitter_example

Various results for the same hashtag. Narrow it down by using an additional keyword or a Twitter username.

Twitter is, in the words of Jessica Hische, an online social networking tool in which users post 140 character updates of what is going on in their lives along with links to things they think are interesting, funny, or useful to their friends and peers (followers, in Twitter speak).

How do you find out what they told about your presentation on Twitter? If you’re already a twitter user and the audience knows your Twitter username (and uses it in their tweets), you’ll see the tweets immediately if you visit twitter.com. If the conference uses a specific keyword, preceded by a #hashtag in Twitter, then you can look up all tweets about the conference. Just go to twitter.com/search-advanced and under ‘Word’ fill in the ‘These hashtags’ field. So, in short, you can tell your trainees to look up the evaluation of their presentations through Twitter.

A final tip: at the beginning of the presentation, give your audience the hashtag for your talk. This is an invitation to start tweeting about the presentation. It practically guarantees you’ll receive valuable feedback.

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Are You Still Married to PowerPoint?

January 6, 2015 9:10 by
Fossil Sitting In Sun Light

Photo credit: A Guy Taking Pictures, published under CC

Telling a trainer to ditch PowerPoint is like telling a newly wed couple they should split up. Let’s hear what trainers have to say about PowerPoint, in a LinkedIn discussion from a a few months ago:

PPT is the lingua franca of corporate communication

It’s a trainer’s or speaker’s aid

I cannot imagine life without it

And yet there’s also no lack of loathing words:

 I always think about ‘Death by Powerpoint’

It looks like a case of “can’t live with or without you”.

But if you are so fond of supporting your training with ‘slides’, you should at least take a look at some of the alternatives for PowerPoint. Then you can make an informed decision whether you want to stay married to PowerPoint.

Prezi

Homotelus bromidensis fossil trilobites

Photo Credit: James St. John, published under CC

Prezi.com offers cloud storage and collaboration features. What does that mean? Well, all your presentations (Prezi doesn’t want to call them slides) are stored on Prezi’s computers. Or offline, if you choose to. In either case you don’t have to worry about making backups, that’s something Prezi’s taking care of. You can access your presentations – with a user account – through your browser and share them in much the same way: through a link.

Google Drive’s Presentation

Google Drive’s Presentation is completely free. It’s hosted for you by Google (think automated backups) and offers collaboration features (including sharing and comments) out of the box.

The share and comment options open up really interesting interactive possibilities, such as inviting your trainees to add comments on the spot or afterwards.

PowerPoint Online

tubular bells

Photo Credit: Mike Beauregard, published under CC

Yep, it’s still PowerPoint, but it’s online, meaning you can share and collaborate. This sounds like the ideal solution for all trainers who want to continue using good old PowerPoint, but in a new fashion.
And finally, a few wise parting words from one of the participants in the LinkedIn discussion.

PPT is just a tool. Can do much good, and much harm. Like any other tool, it needs to fit the task at hand

 

Source

PowerPoint – a Learning aid or a barrier

Please note: this is a closed group (members only), which is also why I left out the names of the trainers mentioned above.

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Super Engaging Online Icebreaker, Created in under 10 Minutes

September 3, 2014 8:15 by

Learn how to create your own, highly engaging online icebreaker in under 10 minutes with this easy to follow step-by-step video.

Create the online icebreaker to better prepare and motivate your trainees for your training. Find out how to include a YouTube video on your own Google Sites webpage, add a discussion forum and invite trainees to leave their comments. This works especially well as an icebreaker because trainees get to know each other a little bit through the discussion forum before the training actually starts.

If you have to squint to make out the details, please use the Full Screen option in the video viewer. Also, make sure that you have selected 720p under the quality settings, because this is a HD video!

Links mentioned in this video:

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