Yesterday, Alex Rister shared one of decks we now use in the online iteration of Professional Communication and Presentation, and today I’d like to pass that knowledge along. “Storytelling: Using the Most Powerful Information Delivery Tool” lays down a few basic principles and ideas about this very sticky method of communication. Storytelling is a cornerstone of the human experience. What a statistic cannot communicate alone, a story can bring to life. The deck begins by explaining the difference between report, whose purpose is to inform, and story, whose purpose is to entertain. A presentation happily lives in the middle of these two and can really help bridge the divide between informing and entertaining. But, it’s the use of story IN the presentation (and not just the slapping of a story in at the beginning or end of a speech) that really makes it so powerful.
As Nancy Duarte discusses below and Alex reiterates in the deck, we should work to layer story into an informative or persuasive speech as one layers a cake (a little info, a little story, repeat).
The deck goes on to explain what makes an effective story (conflict, characters, details, clear theme) as well as comparing story structure to presentation structure. In terms of design, Alex follows the SIMPLE method by keeping her theme unified (one typeface, Ostrich Sans, used in two weights; two contrasting colors used for emphasis, a repeated use of shape), focusing on one idea per slide, and applying the picture superiority effect consistently.
Do you incorporate story into your presentations? What types of stories do you find resonate with your audiences? Do personal stories work best?
After much deliberation and anxiety about overloading Slideshare.net with yet another presentation about presentation design, I’ve debuted by deck for March, Simple Design:
My decision to share this deck with others was difficult. I yearn for new conversations in the field of presentation design and visual communication and I want to be a part of these new conversations. However, I want to share something that is a stronger example of design with users than my previous deck on design, Tweak Your Slides.
The subject of visual thinking and cinematic visual aids is inevitable as we move further and further towards a society that yearns to connect with experience/brand/individual beyond the textual. In class, we devote a significant amount of time to designing a visual story, but more than this, we consider how inherent visuals have become in the conveying of our ideas and brands. Outside of class, I spend my time defending the post-clip art, post-1987 PowerPoint approach to presentation design against what I can only classify as a lizard brain-driven anxiety that comes with doing something different or non-traditional. Many of my colleagues accept how I approach teaching and see that it works, but cannot believe it could work outside of the vacuum of “fluffy” subjects like public speaking (this is of course not true in any respect). Alex Rister discussed this resistance on her blog, and lists this as one reason why this approach “won’t work” we often hear. But, then there are times when the visual thinking bug takes hold. One of our colleagues created a dynamic and immersive GoTo training complete with zombies and sound effects, and this month, super student Chris Martignago completed his month’s work of homework using visual thinking:
Assigning reading homework is the bane of my existence–Resonate is an awesome book, but forcing students to read it means some of its impact is lost in the miasma of routine and compulsory action. Chris’s solution, which was to make the outline something immersive and kinesthetic, is brilliant!
In the past few weeks, several new decks focused on the topic of visual thinking have debuted on Slideshare. The first I’ll share with you today is Duarte Design’s #IllustraTED, which is a project developed by Duarte Design that gathers amazing illustrators and artists together to visualize and draw out some of this year’s talks:
(My favorite of course is Andrew McAfee’s talk on scifi and jobs.)
I also want to share with you two decks on visual storytelling and marketing that really give us a glimpse into where visual communication can take us in the future. The first, created by Column Five Media, “Visual Content Marketing: Capture and Engage your Audience,” is an impeccably organized presentation that blends the essential ingredients–text, color, shape, layout, line, texture, and image–to communicate a core idea–we consume, communicate through, and are engaged by visuals, but succeeding with this in mind is not just about slapping a picture on a site and calling it a day.
The second deck, “Instabrand: The Rise of Visual Storytelling in a Content Marketing World,” an e-book by Christian Adams, isolates the same six communication media as the previous deck (photos, infographics, memes, videos, comics, visual note-taking), but focuses less on the how and more on the why this has happened and what the future will hold. This deck works less as a stand alone than Column Five’s, but I found the exposure to future forms of visual marketing/visual communication to be very enlightening.
What do you think? Do we still have room to grow this conversation? Have we said all there is to say about visual communication? If so, why is there still so much resistance?
If you read this blog, you know of my undying admiration and affection for my superteacher best friend, the very talented Alex Rister. This month, Alex debuted her brand new visual design lesson for her class and also featured shots from this deck on her blog. Well, today, her latest Slideshare offering went live. Check out an “Introduction to Slide Design.” This deck has also become an integral part of our latest faculty development endeavor, The Presentation Revolution.
Today’s deck comes from my favorite superteacher, Alex Rister. The visual resume began as a fun side project for me and then became a mission–help my students create a more dynamic picture of their qualities as professionals online. In teaching the visual resume, I draw inspiration from the success of others, namely David Crandall and Alex Rister. Both of these individuals have successful visual resumes.
1. She uses story to convey her unique perspective
Alex tells audiences the story of how she found her calling as communications guru and public speaking teacher. Instead of just starting with “I was born…” she begins with a bigger idea–innovation, and then illustrates how she is part of this new age of innovation.
2. She designs unified visuals
Alex uses color, type, shape, and alignment to create something that is uniquely hers. Alex’s use of pink against the vintage images is classy yet whimsical. Her choice of Komika Axis speaks to her personality–this is Alex’s signature typeface.
3. Her visual resume does more than what any traditional resume can do
Alex uses this medium to highlight not only her extensive leadership and teaching experience and professional work as an educator, but also as a means of sharing her ideas on communication, work, and the world at large.
Check out Alex Rister’s visual resume, as well as her other amazing deck (which is a required reading in our Professional Communication and Presentation course), Seven Deadly Sins of Visual Design.
Last month, two students complained that “Compfight and Flickr sucked,” and that they could not find the images they were looking for. I challenged them by asking them if they thought my slides sucked or if their superteacher Alex Rister’s slides sucked. They laughed, said no, and asked why. My response–because we only use Flickr and search only through Compfight. If you can’t find what you are looking for in the world’s largest image social networking site, then the problem has more to do with the way you are searching. Flickr is awesome. I credit this storehouse of images with completely transforming my use of imagery in my slides. Compfight was a true blessing; it filters out anything I cannot use and provides me with relevant results every time. Both forced me to come to terms with the fact that I, like many, was a “slide sloth.”
According to Alex Rister, Google Images has made us all “slide sloths” (Source); we put in a search term “evolve” and expect magical results. Because Google Images is running an unfiltered search of the entire web, students often find exactly what they are looking for–too bad it is too small, cheesy clip art, watermarked stock photography, or not labeled for commercial use. We must change the way we actually search for images. I am cooking up a more thorough “how to” on searching through Compfight and Flickr for Six Minutes, but in the meantime, remember, to find great images on Flickr, follow amazing people like JD Hancock, search for concrete things that represent your abstract ideas, and be patient–I have spent hours looking for that perfect image. The first slide to my latest deck took me 4 hours of adapting search terms, rethinking my metaphor, and adapting my approach!
My deck is three images from being done (and by done I mean a first draft that several folks have the duty to now destroy and decimate) and I have a full day of grading ahead of me, so just a quick post today to share some the images I’ve found while searching for hmm….three weeks…with you. There were many more images I loved that I did not use, but these are a few of the highlights.
Incredible Bokeh by JD Hancock
Field 0 by zachstern
Freedom by Angelo Gonzalez
In the rapture (explored) by Elizabeth Haslam
Meditation by deadoll
Crab Nebula: Energy for 100,000 Suns (NASA, Chandra, 11/23/09) by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
I am taking a two month break from the classroom courtesy of an individual I have since realized is some kind of super robot, Alex Rister. She is teaching two months worth of very lucky folks. I know because I love being Alex’s student every other month! I love learning, enough to know I want to be a part of the proceses that lead to learning for the rest of my working life. This month, Alex taught a group of go-getting superstudents who outshine their contemporaries in diligence, commitment to excellence, and a positive spirit.
I took a break from working on my behemoth latest deck to review their final self-reflections for the month. Needless to say, they moved me–from admissions of this being a refuge from a tumultuous life to this being a hellishly difficult yet unforgettable month, the students gained so much from their experience this month. It echoes the concept of “naches” which I am reading about in Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken. Naches is the feeling of pride in someone else’s accomplishment; it is often felt by parents and teachers. I love a good naches. It happened this month and in many months prior. Every month, I feel naches, a sort of teacher win when a student labors towards awesomeness.
August’s class not only chose these as the qualities they most admired in other speakers; they also embodied them.
This post is written for superteacher, Alex Rister, who inspires her students to warm my cold, cold teacher heart each and every month.
Yesterday, Alex Rister shared a new extra credit assignment with her class based on an article she wrote on comedian Kevin Hart. Rister outlines five lessons presenters can take from Hart–note that none of them are “be a comedian.” The lessons instead focus on strategies presenters can use to better engage with audiences and enrich their experiences. She then challenged us to develop our own “Lessons from..” article. I’ve begun the process (because for the past few days, tweaking and designing has been far more interesting than sleep) with one of my biggest inspirations, Etta James, whose magnificently versatile voice brought the jubilance of “At Last” to life as easily as she conveyed anguish and heart break in “I’d Rather Go Blind.” James was a dynamo her entire career. Weathering the now too common storms of stardom, she performed up until 2009, two years before she passed of leukemia. James’ live performances are mesmerizing, albeit often raunchy and bawdy. It’s this unbridled passion that inspires me as a presenter. I’ll be studying her performances over the next few days to prepare a more thorough analysis, but for now, I leave you with Ms. James and three lessons I drew from this performance.
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!
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!
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).
