Do Better Things

Here are the slides I used in a presentation I gave to my staff today. Several folks on the staff asked me to share them, so I thought I'd do it here. If you didn't get to see/hear the presentation live, the slides will obviously be a bit out of context, but perhaps there will be something you find interesting anyway. (For those that did see it live, I added back in the slides about college that I didn't use today because of time.)




Update10-19-13: Someone asked if there was any significance to the music I played before starting this presentation. I'll leave that to you, Dear Reader, to decide :-).

Shout by Tears for Fears
It's My Life by Bon Jovi
We're Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister

It's a Thirsty World

Jeff Brenman, who created the amazing SlideShare version of the original Did You Know?/Shift Happens for their World's Best Presentation Contest last year, has an entry in this year's contest in the same style titled "Thirst."

While not directly related to the usual content of this blog, I thought I'd share it out for two reasons. First, I think it's an important issue to discuss. Second, I think it's another example of the power of imagery and how we should help students (and teachers) learn that PowerPoints/Keynotes/Slideshares don't have to have a ton of text on them to be effective (and, in fact, rarely should have a ton of text on them).

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Tech Weekend Presentation - Questions You'd Like Addressed

This post is for folks attending Anne Smith's and my presentation(s) at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia Catholic Schools Tech Weekend. If you have any questions/issues you'd like us to address, please leave a comment.

Here is the web page that has some of the examples we'll be sharing.

Texas A&M Presentation Questions and Feedback

Brian Hatak and I had the pleasure of presenting at Texas A&M on Friday as part of their Teacher Summit 2008: Contextualizing Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. This post is a place to leave questions or feedback for Brian and me.

We stayed for the whole day, learned a bunch, and had a good time. Thanks to Diane, Marilyn, and everyone that took such good care of us.

As a side note, neither Brian nor I are particularly comfortable behind a podium, so we probably would've donned the lapel microphones and presented from down in front like we did anyway. But even if we did like podiums, this one was a little intimidating. It's hard to concentrate on your presentation when you have Hail to the Chief running through your head . . .

RMSLA Presentation Questions and Feedback

I had the opportunity to present to the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Special Libraries Association last night. This post is for any questions you have or feedback you would like to give. Thanks to Wanda and all the nice folks at RMSLA for having me – it was fun.

ADVIS Presentation Questions and Feedback

Anne Smith and I had the pleasure of presenting alongside Will Richardson today to the good folks at the Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools. This post is a place to leave questions or feedback for Anne and me. I apologize for the delay in posting this, but we didn’t anticipate that Blogger would be blocked at a Country Club (note to self: always ask about the filter ahead of time, even in non-school venues).

Here’s the wiki that the network built in response to a tweet by Will. In addition, several folks asked about some classroom examples from our school, so here are some we’ve demoed previously (the top part is about our staff development efforts, scroll down to see the examples). (As always, these are a work in progress and not necessarily "exemplary" work – we feel it’s important to share what we’ve tried even when the results weren’t all we hoped for.) Feel free to leave a comment and/or contact Anne or me if you have further questions.

Thank you to Barbara and the other folks at ADVIS that invited us out and treated us so nicely. Thank you also to Will – ‘twas a privilege.

UNA Presentation

On Tuesday Anne Smith and I will be presenting at the University of North Alabama. This post is to link to the web page in support of that presentation for future reference, and as a place for UNA folks to provide feedback or ask questions in the comments.

World’s Best Presentation Contest on SlideShare

I wasn’t going to blog about this (trying to keep this blog from becoming the Shift Happens blog), but there’s been a little bit of confusion so I wanted to clear things up.

A “stylized” version of the Did You Know/Shift Happens presentation was selected the winner by the judges of SlideShare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest (and second place by the “people”). I do not deserve the credit for this, Jeff Brenman does. Jeff is a recent graduate of Northwestern University (I’m a not-so-recent grad) and is starting his own design business. He asked me if he could remix Did You Know/Shift Happens and submit it to the contest. I said sure, he did, and it ended up winning (with some pretty impressive judges – Guy Kawasaki, Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds, and Jerry Weissman).

Take a few minutes and watch Jeff's presentation (also embedded below), as well as the other winners – to get ideas about how to improve your next presentation. Congratulations Jeff!