Effective Presentations

The ability to deliver an effective presentation isn't just an AP Seminar skill - it's a critical life skill. People who can communicate clearly are in demand in almost every industry.

Therefore, I spent a lot of time this year coming up with activities and lessons to teach my students how to put together a good presentation.  Today I'm sharing the activity that we started with.

First, I gave my students a copy of this HANDOUT.  Then I had them watch two presentations:

1.  Steve Jobs presenting the first iphone (we only watched the first 10 minutes of this presentation)

2.  Bill Gates presenting a new touchscreen

After we'd watched the two presentations, the students discussed the differences in body language, language, slide style and confidence of both speakers.

But here's the twist!

After we'd discussed the presentations, I told the students that they had one more thing to do.  They had to turn their handouts over and make two columns - one for the iphone and one for the touchscreen.  Then they had 2 minutes to write down as many facts as they could remember the speakers relaying about each.

When the time was up, every student had more facts about the iphone.  Most could barely remember anything about the touchscreen.

This activity was a great way to introduce the idea that a great presentation includes slides that are intended to assist the audience's understanding of the topic.  It's explained in simple, easy-to-understand language and it focuses on the most important information that the speaker wants to convey.