Lovely busy day!

Today, I worked with my superteacher bestie, Alex Rister, on our upcoming month of Professional Communication and Presentation. I am anxious to get back into the classroom, and want to convey that same much needed “reality check” to this incoming bunch of superstudents. I cooked up an explanation of the online course structure. It’s not perfect, and it needs polish, but it reinforced to me just how completely empowering design-centered thinking is. I love finding and tweaking problems and through collaboration with amazing people generating workable solutions.

I also got back on the grading horse this evening while my jambalaya cooked. My students are really impressing me with their slide:ology analysis discussion posts! They are choosing excellent examples of Nancy Duarte’s principles of slide arrangement and the choosing of impacting visual elements. This deck of slides comes via Mallic Braxton:

Back to work! Grading, then it’s time to get back to tweaking my on campus class’ first day!

Deck of the Day: Toastmasters International, Visual Storytelling

I’ve been working on a new series of decks related to writing and the application of the concepts I’ve learned to the art of composition, and I’ve also been working on grades for my online students all in the lovely Pacific Northwest. This is by far my favorite part of the country, and I love being here and gaining inspiration from the world around me. As I graded, I ran across this excellent deck by Gleb Maitsev of Toastmasters International. I’ve flirted with the idea of Toastmasters; I’ve never attended a meeting and I think this is partly because of my own misconceptions about the place, which are driven by my fears about public speaking. Maitsev has definitely intrigued me with this deck:

Narratives: Why do we tell stories?

I have been working as a teacher and instructional designer for 10 years, and in speaking to a fellow teacher today, I realized that one of the reasons I love teaching so much is because I love creating learning content. I’ve been working on this latest deck for quite a while, I’ll contextualize it with some lessons I use to teach narrative writing and speaking in a classroom. I’ll be revising this and tying it to speech, as storytelling is an integral part of a great presentation.  That segment will feature the lovely work with storytelling done by Nancy Duarte in Resonate, the new textbook for my class, Professional Communication and Presentation. If you are a leader, follower, teacher, student, professional, parent, communicator–which we all are, you must read this book. This time, I’ll focus on narrative writing.

I created this deck to go along with this content. Another behemoth…

What is Narrative Writing?

Think about the conversations you have with your friends, the timelines you see on your Facebook page, the songs your favorite artists write about their lives, the stories your parents and grandparents told you. These are all narratives, personal stories that share a lesson or reflect on an experience with the reader. Some writers create essays that are entirely narratives, but narrative structures are also a great way to organize different kinds of writing and can be an important part of a persuasive message.  So, why do we tell so many stories?

7 Reasons Narratives are Useful and Powerful (Source):

They are real

They are interesting

They are human

They are easy to tell

They are memorable

They move people

They are universal

How to use stories and narrative writing.

• Make your narrative relevant to the experience and interests of your audience. A narrative should have a point to it that your readers can easily grasp and readily identify with.
• Every great narrative has both a series of events and a moment of reflection.
• A good narrative puts information in perspective. It doesn’t replace information.
• A good story paints a picture. It helps your listeners “see” what you’re saying.  Great stories make abstract ideas concrete.
• Make something happen in the story. It should happen in a specific time and place. Make the characters in your story sympathetic and real.

Before you create your own narrative essay, we will practice via a few activities to sharpen your narration and storytelling muscles:

It’s all in the Details

Great narratives and stories appeal to our five senses, using concrete language to place the reader within the writer’s experience. Details and specifics engage readers by bringing an experience to life, allowing the reader to become a part of the story. Still not convinced details matter? Does the following sound familiar?

A farm boy with big dreams runs across two robots and an old man. Together they set off on an adventure with a captain and his first mate to save a princess and destroy an evil fortress. After some adventures and challenges, the boy and his companions rescue the princess and save the day.

The preceding is the plot of George Lucas’ Star Wars. Would the story have had as much impact without those details? Without concrete language, the story falls flat and leaves the reader wanting more. These details are often used to create a fuller picture of the narrative’s important themes, places, and people.

So, how do you create a story that’s more than just a series of events? Think about what makes Star Wars exciting, the dynamic between the characters, the beautiful scenery, the plot twists, and challenging situations. All of these create an impacting story. So, use reasons, examples, names, numbers, and senses to help you bring your narrative to life.

Narrative writing also follows certain conventions in terms of structure. There are varied perspectives on what makes a strong narrative structure, from Freytag’s Triangle:

(Source: Paul Gorman)

to Joseph Campbell’s Hero Cycle

(Source: Nancy Duarte, Duarte Design)

To Ira Glass, This American Story writer and personality. Check out his building blocks of a great story here:

My friend and colleague Jaclyn Sullivan shares this gem from Kurt Vonnegut, who discusses here the shape of stories. Watch Vonnegut make sense of the age old boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl story.

In class, we study and practice this by working on a few activities, including a mini-discussion (my sneaky way of making students take an active role in their learning journeys) and a mini-saga flash story assignment. See them here.

What do you think makes a story great? What narratives–true stories about our experiences–have you read that impacted you?

Be the Signal, Not the Noise: Develop a Visual Resume

Recently, I presented a workshop on visual resumes for faculty and staff at my school. Visual resumes have been a standard in the on campus Professional Communication and Presentation course. My students create amazing supplements to their traditional resumes. I shared a bit of information with faculty and staff about what a visual resume is, why it matters, and why a paper resume is just not enough. Check out my latest slideshare upload here:

Every now and then, I dabble in some poesy

One reason why I don’t often write poetry is because, well, I am not a poet. I find the democracy of spoken word to be intriguing, yet at the same time problematic in its creation of an entire generation of individuals who are poets simply because they write down a witty phrase or share their feelings. I equate my own talent with this approach. To me, true poesy is a skill not easily achieved. My favorite poets–John Keats, Ezra Pound, Sylvia Plath, Philip Levine–these individuals studied poesy, they revised endlessly, understood the anxiety of influence, and devoted their entirety to their work. My friend Stephen Mills is such a poet. I have had the privilege of hearing him read from his book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices twice now, most recently at the Maitland Art Center’s Culture and Cocktails night, which was put together by the lovely and talented Ashley Inguanta. His poetry is raw, complex, intimate, and resplendently beautiful. It is also clearly poesy–it illustrates technical prowess, proficiency, and a clear attention to the complexity of language. Please read his poetry, then compare it to the middle school ramblings below. This is draft one of my latest, “Before I left Orlando, I fell in love with possibility.”

Update: here are a few immediate revisions I made that I did not have a chance to upload:

Losing my Superteacher Way and Finding it Again

This month has been the most challenging of my teaching career since my first class at Valencia College. At that time, my naivete about my audience’s willingness to discuss and openly question their political views ended up creating a pretty negative rapport between myself and several students. I have since then learned much about how to better navigate audience values, how to take command of my classroom and create a culture of respect, and how to still have fun while pushing students to really apply their critical thinking skills.

This month, though, this month has really tested not only my skills as a teacher, but my desire to continue doing this. I am used to apathy, disinterest, and dismissal as a teacher of both writing and speech. Students often don’t see the importance of strong communication skills, though they believe they definitely possess these excellent writing and speaking skills and know employers look for this in candidates. What made this month so much more challenging was extreme resistance and what I can only describe as a complete disregard for what it actually means for one to be a professional. As my class is called Professional Communication and Presentation, I feel it is important to hold students accountable for the attributes they will be held to in the workforce.

Being a student is one of our first tests as professionals. One’s ability to follow instructions, provide clear referencing of information and image sources, respectfulness for others when they are presenting, speaking, or teaching, timeliness and attendance, respectful language, and a commitment to quality are all skills we grow first as students. This is part of what is meant by professionalism, a term which began as a reference to the devotion with which an individual approached the church’s work in the 13th century. Students consistently showed up to class late, were openly disrespectful, and focused only on the negatives of having a challenging set of classes (this is too much work–you don’t really expect it to be good, do you?). Students seemed surprised when they were held accountable for work they’d committed to. Students illustrated (up to today, the last day) that they’d read none of the assigned readings, listened to very little of the in-class lessons, and internalized only the bits they had to to pass the class.

The situation deteriorated so far that I lost all gusto and fire for the subjects I love so much. My audience in turn lost all interest in the subject. So, what did I do to create this situation? From my perspective, it was my vehemence for following basic rules of attribution, respect for classmates, respect for the subject, and accountability that created an adversarial relationship between myself and this group of learners. So, what do I do? Be more lenient? Forget about things like attribution, strong credible sources, and respect for class time, instructors, and class members?

What I found ironic about the complete disconnect between my students and myself is that these students were actually insanely smart–one had been one semester away from an aerospace engineering degree. Another’s fascinating presentation on the role of chaos in the formation of the universe, while too focused on information to truly be a persuasive presentation, captivated me nonetheless. Several of the students were voracious readers, not the norm in young people these days. But, it was the entire structure of education that alienated them. These students wanted the freedom to ask questions and determine the course of their educational journeys–this is commendable and a quality that should be nurtured in young people. However, they were ill equipped to self-direct their own learning journeys because they cannot function in the academic model (and, yes, though I believe in creativity, autonomy, and conceptual thinking, I do believe that education should in a sense be academic, at least in the sense that students are educated to understand their responsibilities as leaders and experts in their chosen field of study). Ken Robinson, one of my educational heroes, claims that we are getting our students through education by anesthetizing them, working to serve the interests of industrialism. I call this fast food education–this focus on making education the same for everyone. This model leads to the belief that school is just a mandatory process of indoctrination that must be suffered and endured. I believe we must reinforce Robinson’s concept of divergent thinking and change educational paradigms–we must continually push our students to “think laterally”, to go beyond the standard solutions to the increasingly complex problems of the 21st century. However, every individual deserves respect and we cannot escape our responsibilities as professional stewards of our expanded knowledge–both students and teachers. Check out the rest of Robinson’s RSA talk below.

This month was a serious bummer, and a real wake up call to me. Not everyone wants to learn, not everyone cares, and sometimes, no matter what we do, once an audience is completely closed off, it’s best just to focus on how to better serve future learners so that the situation is not repeated. I’ve spent a good two weeks castigating myself, considering and questioning every pedagogical and instructional decision of the past three years, and generally thinking of ways to engage students in the process of becoming better speakers, finding opportunities for them to autonomously develop their strengths and areas of improvement, and developing a stronger definition of professionalism and the importance of strong communication skills. I am happily working on a new first day discussion of the term “professional” and helping my amazing online students develop their PechaKucha presentations. I also found out today that a club I am co-sponsoring, the Young Democrats Club, has been approved. I cannot wait to get to work with a new bunch of students in support of the YDC’s platform.

I am still a superteacher and this is the learning revolution!

Sage advice from a superteacher

So, I admit it. I am sometimes quick to judge, particularly when it comes to a subject as dear to me as instructional design. I created a reading list for myself at the beginning of the year that included some heavy focus on design, from Dan Roam’s Blah Blah Blah to my current read, Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn.

I really did not care for the book at first. I judged it based on a cursory glance and an exploration of chapter 1. I deemed it a poor substitute to my own amazing ideas for design. I scoffed at fellow superteacher Alex Rister‘s praise for the book. Then, I had a come to Chi Chi moment. This is my term for a one on one moment of nurturing yet firm honesty. I usually have them with students. I really needed this one.

Teachers, students, and business folk scoff at my approach to visual design almost on a daily basis. They refuse to see any other way to convey information besides vague bullets; they devote little time to preparation–preparation that leads to active learning in the classroom as opposed to passive information bombardment; they rely on their slides as a safety net and security blanket and lucky rabbit’s foot and mask to hide behind. I did the same thing with Dirksen and her ideas. I dismissed it without really absorbing it. Alex’s very wise statement…

Alex Rister keeps it real. Image: susivinh (catching up, or trying!)

…has led me to give this book and Dirksen, an authority in the field of instructional design and a passionate advocate for design in education, its due respect. So, this week, as the students enjoy spring break, I’ll be taking Dirksen’s book to the beach and really doing a bit of course-related instructional design soul searching. I am stoked.

My reading process, from disbelief and disdain, to piqued interest, acceptance, and finally, complete stokedness (the state of being totally stoked).

Cicero’s Five Canons: If it Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

Last week’s Mega-Double in Professional Communication and Presentation (that would be 8 hours of class…in one day…at once…) focused on the following topics:

• What 10 qualities students want to work to embody in their own presentations
• An introduction to my favorite TED talk, Benjamin Zander’s, “On music and passion”
• How to manage presentation anxiety
• The importance of thorough audience analysis
• Nancy Duarte’s New Slide Ideology
• Garr Reynold’s Naked Presenter/techniques for delivering engaging presentations

That was a light day, actually. What always falls by the wayside that I just can’t seem to find a new place for are Cicero’s Five Canons of Rhetoric.

Seriously, I sneak this in during persuasion, but it should be part of the first day. It’s time to really have a heart to heart with the part of me that is willing to cut mercilessly like Ira Glass. Until then, I share my two cents on Cicero’s Five Canons with you here. Cicero, whom I refer to as the OG of oration, developed these canons or arts between 55-51 BCE as a means of further standardizing the work Aristotle had first developed in On Rhetoric in the 5th century BCE. Cicero, although a great orator, as a supporter of the Republic, struggled against the power-hungry First Triumvirate, Julius Caesar’s taking of Rome, and the Second Triumvirate’s power plays. He met his end at the hands of Mark Antony.  Though currently not in fashion as a great rhetorician, Cicero’s study of the process of speech remains a staple of public speaking curricula. These are the five keys to any great speech, and they fit in nicely with Nancy Duarte’s presentation ecosystem of message, visual story, and delivery.

Invention

According to rhetoric god, Jay Heinrich’s, Cicero, who was considered the greatest orator of his time, believed that invention was more important than delivery. Heinrich’s quotes Cicero, stating that “eloquence without wisdom has often been a great obstacle and never an advantage” (Source). It is this searching out of wisdom, the seeking of knowledge that is applied via experience that characterizes invention best.

In the invention phase, presenters seek out the means of best appealing to their audience; they determine counter-arguments, complete audience personas, conduct surveys, and conduct deep research into credible sources of information. In this phase of the presentation development process, the best rule of thumb is to resist the urge to cut and delete. This is about getting everything out and finding all connective points.

In class, I introduce them to a few more thoughts on invention, including those of Duarte, Reynolds, and Godin, as well as introducing them to Dan Pink’s concept of “A Whole New Mind.” I use Pink’s concept of thinking with a whole mind because this objective, creative and logical approach to planning a presentation taps into all of our strengths as humans. Great invention takes a whole minded approach.

Arrangement

 While it may seem obvious to us that arranging and organizing our ideas into a digestible, understandable, and concrete structure, for orators in Cicero’s time, organizing one’s ideas around a centralized point was not so obvious. While critics of Cicero’s canons claim the rigidity of his method kills creativity, I find liberation in constraints, and as one of my students’ major concerns is the “flow” of their presentations, I believe some study into arrangement can only help.

For Cicero, arrangement was divided into six parts: “an introduction, a statement of facts, a division between ideas (if there is one), proof or evidence supporting all ideas, refutation of ideas, an optional digression, and conclusion” (Source).  A presenter uses logic, emotion, and credibility to build each of these chunks and considers the tools in his or her rhetorical arsenal when determining what goes where. For instance, in class, we discuss the importance of beginning with strong emotional or intellectual PUNCH, creating a strong initial impression of credibility, and providing a clear big idea and Duarte’s crossing of the threshold in the introduction.

Another strategy we use in class is storyboarding. My students’ prepare a Pecha Kucha presentation in two weeks as part of their major projects in class. With only two weeks, every moment becomes important, especially the moments devoted to arrangement. As a PK is not your typical presentation and presenters are often anxious about connectivity, exact organization, and flow, we use storyboarding to help create a dynamic, visually-driven structure before slide design begins.

Style

Style in terms of language has less to do with overly flowery phrases, fancy jargon, and elaborate metaphors and much more to do with the speaker applying his or her natural strengths and the three rhetorical appeals to how he or she speaks and presents the information. An orator’s style arsenal depends on experience, comfort level, and intellect, but it often includes one staple–storytelling. Telling stories is a universal form of conveying evidence, emotion, and credibility that has been a staple of the human experience, since pre-literate times as Nancy Duarte explains. Stories not only help touch your audience emotionally (at least, well written stories chock full of relatable characters, concrete detail, and significance), but they also provide tangible evidence and proof (assuming you are not lying). Finally, stories also lend speakers credibility, illustrating a personal connection to the topic and similarity with the audience.

Memory

This is probably the canon I devote the least attention to in class, partly because it is each presenter’s responsibility to practice and prepare, but also because as I’ve learned, the best messages are not memorized, but internalized so that they are delivered as if they are from memory. Unlike the Romans, though, we don’t devote attention to the memory and internalization centers of our children’s minds. We increasingly rely on tools to help us remember, going so far as using a slideshow as a teleprompter. For Cicero, “memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.” It is the presenter’s task to internalize a message and know it as well as she knows her childhood home.

Check out my post on rehearsing a PechaKucha for some excellent internalization advice from Felix Jung of Avoision.com.

Delivery

Cicero’s final canon is delivery. Delivery, while it may seem to be all about flashy hand gestures, projection, articulation, and eye contact, is so much more about conveying one’s natural passion for a subject. As Garr Reynold’s puts it in The Naked Presenter, presenting naked “means connecting and engaging with an audience…in a way that is direct, honest, and clear. …The naked approach embraces the ideas of simplicity, integrity, and passion” (Source). In class, we study his approach to delivering an engaging presentation–connect, engage, sustain, and end powerfully.

 

So, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Apply Cicero’s five canons of rhetoric to your next presentation and make one of history’s greatest orators (and your audience) proud!

 

A Deck to Admire as I Climb Mount Grade

March has been one of my busiest teaching months. 70 students all submitting major projects for which I record video feedback and thousands of words in discussion posts have definitely kept my focus away from the blog, I am sure to my own detriment. But, I can already see the summit of Mount Grade, and with only 40 students this month, I will be able to devote much more time to further explorations into design and public speaking. I am working on a new deck on visual resumes to debut at our annual spring break faculty development week, and I am stoked to share it very soon. In the meantime, as I graded discussions whose focus is to analyze a slide deck on slideshare that illustrates Nancy Duarte’s principles of design and her new slide ideology, I ran into this gem by Forsythe Technology.

Mobile Devices in the Workplace: 5 Key Security Risks is not only chock full of practical information, illustrating Duarte’s thesis #2: Spread Ideas and Move People, but it also Practices Design and not Decoration; it provides clean and easily identifiable visuals, clearly following the Help them See What You are Saying rule. Finally it’s use of storytelling appeals to a universal audience, and focuses on audience needs–Treating the Audience as King and Cultivating a Healthy Relationship.

Design Envy: Rebooting my Curriculum Vitae

So, I admit it, I suffer from design envy or slide envy, one of Alex Rister’s 7 Deadly Sins of Design. I can’t help it. I see something, I want it. I want to be able to make it and do it. So, when my friend Christin sent me her amazing new resume, I had to find a way to adapt her style to my traditional CV. I’ve agonized over colors, fonts, layouts, content, phrasing, and punctuation. After a week and a half of gut-wrenching work, I give you the first working draft of my new CV. Phew!

Chiara Ojeda, Curriculum Vitae

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