Multimedia Presentation Course
A New Direction for Presenting and Educating
Sessions I & II
with William L. Farrell
We can no longer allow multimedia teaching and presenting to be underutilized or misused with a lack of understanding of how students learn better. We need to change our direction when presenting ideas and educating our students.
As educators, we love this profession and we have messages to deliver and great stories to tell. Perhaps you have seen someone deliver a great presentation and wished that you could learn to be as effective. I've personally worked with individuals who have learned presentation skills that have taken them from being mundane teachers to inspiring educators.
This course begins with understanding how students learn better by opening up their audio and visual channels. Lessons are then developed into stories and these stories are delivered by the educator in the form of a dialogue. Some stories are short and specific, while others are longer. When educators follow this plan, their students will be inspired and they will experience meaningful learning.
I've seen educators who delivered PowerPoint® presentations that were painful in their communication breakdown. By this I mean presentations that dragged on without making any points; presentations with too much on-screen text and presentations where the text was so small that it was unreadable or actually blended in with the background. I've also witnessed educators who sat down and read the on-screen text with their backs turned toward their students. Unfortunately many students see poorly delivered presentations given by their teachers and mentors and THINK THAT IS THE WAY POWERPOINT SHOULD BE DONE. This is a terrible message and it perpetuates inferior and poor quality teaching and modeling.
There Needs to Be a New Direction for Presenting and Educating.
Some educators may think that working with PowerPoint® is too difficult, too time consuming and often too impersonal. At first, these concerns might seem reasonable, however if these same educators could discover PowerPoint's enormous potential, they would soon discover the enormous value of using this medium. They would realize a new direction for presenting and educating.
The audio visual medium of PowerPoint® is now widely available and educators need to know how to unleash its potential. Educators must not merely offer canned PowerPoint presentations but create and deliver their own personally crafted presentations and let their students get a glimpse into their soul.
Crafting a story through PowerPoint® is unlike anything done before on such a scale. Currently there are over 10 million copies of PowerPoint® worldwide. Important and inspiring educational messages are now being delivered using this medium. Some of these messages are changing the course of history! Additionally, the prices of the necessary computer equipment and projectors are steadily decreasing and grants and funds are now being made available to educators who have a strong desire to pursue the direction of multimedia learning.
To Lead in this New Direction, Educators Must Abandon the Practice of the Information Presenters and Become Cognitive Guides.
The knowledge, writing and creative skills necessary to produce these classroom presentations are all learnable. The acquisition of these skills is propelled by our desire to learn and improve as educators who are willing to move away from being Information Presenters and into the direction of being Cognitive Guides.
I believe that there is enormous power when educating with words and pictures. While words and context can be translated and interpreted over several languages, pictures will always be able to stand alone in any language and in any culture. While words alone have a certain degree of meaning, a projected photograph of an impoverished orphan in central Africa when combined with a related dialogue can produce a more powerful learning experience.
As educators, we are on the threshold of a new direction in learning. Moving in this direction requires persistence, a commitment to learning and a willingness to explore and properly use multimedia as a learning tool. However, only when we begin to understand how our students learn better, will we get the students we deserve.
Instructor:
William Farrell
wfarrell@kua.org
