“…spontaneous marks to help yourself think…”
In the TED Talk embedded below Sunni Brown, author of Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers
Category Archives: Learning Resources
different think – presentation books
Non-fiction professional reading but I believe very relevant to our daily work in the school library- visual design. Two books that I found very strong reading in my pursuit to strengthen my design skills yet also be valuable to my peers: Presentation Zen and Resonate. The antidote for ‘death by Powerpoint’. The true outcome however has been far more rewarding- in an way, zen-like.
“…You will never look at a blank whiteboard, Keynote slide, sticky notes or pinboards ever again.”
If you can’t draw to save your soul but can dress to kill, then these two books will strengthen you and your colleagues visual literacy.
Not only do we teach students directly but we often instruct or model our peers, the teachers. I’ve began I quiet revolution a number of years ago to improve the visual communication and even the physical environment in our school. I can see the impact around me but it is very exciting to witness a student you zen coached teach another student how to use ‘presentation zen’ -it’s not a book but a idiom or metaphor for construction and creation. Powerpoints, Dragon’s Den, Grad Portfolios, or any display.
What do we see? How do we read? What is the message? Is that an optimal graphic? These are all inquiries into meaning.
A) Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
Garr Reynolds is am articulate writer with superior illustration who delivers a message that transcends Powerpoint or Keynote and can influence every delivery or lesson plan for the better. I’d select this as a text book if I was teaching info tech, entrepreneurship, marketing, edtech, web design, media arts,… heck, I’m a convert- let’s face it! Check out http://www.presentationzen.com and his blog. Paperback or Kindle editions.
B) Resonate, by Nancy Duarte.
Another fascinating if maybe technical book. I first heard about Duarte when I read Slide:ology but when Reynolds blogged her second book had to bite. I particularly found her ‘Sparkline’ concept within storyboards powerful. By integrates techniques normally reserved for cinema and literature, Resonate reveals how to transform any presentation into an engaging journey. You will discover how to understand your audience, create persuasive content, and elicit a groundswell response.
Presentation Tips from Resonate
Create a moment where you dramatically drive the big idea home by intentionally placing Something They’ll Always Remember—a S.T.A.R. moment—in each presentation. This moment should be so profound or so dramatic that it becomes what the audience chats about at the water cooler or appears as the headline of a news article. Planting a S.T.A.R. moment in a presentation keeps the conversation going even after it’s over and helps the message go viral.
Since you might be presenting to an audience that sees lots of presentations—like a venture capitalist or a customer who is reviewing several vendors—you want to stand out two weeks after you presented, when they’re making their final decision. You want them to remember YOU instead of all the other presenters they encountered.
The S.T.A.R. moment should be a significant, sincere, and enlightening moment during the presentation that helps magnify your big idea—not distract from it.
There are five types of S.T.A.R. moments:
• Memorable Dramatization: Small dramatizations convey insights. They can be as simple as a prop or demo, or something more dramatic, like a reenactment or skit.
• Repeatable Sound Bites: Small, repeatable sound bites help feed the press with headlines, populate and energize social media channels with insights, and give employees a rally cry.
• Evocative Visuals: A picture really is worth a thousand words—and a thousand emotions. A compelling image can become an unforgettable emotional link to your information.
• Emotive Storytelling: Stories package information in a way that people remember. Attaching a great story to the big idea makes it easily repeatable beyond the presentation.
• Shocking Statistics: If statistics are shocking, don’t gloss over them; draw attention to them.
The S.T.A.R. moment shouldn’t be kitschy or cliché. Make sure it’s worthwhile and appropriate, or it could end up coming off like a really bad summer camp skit. Know your audience and determine what will resonate best with them. Don’t create something that’s overly emotionally charged for an audience of biochemists.
S.T.A.R. moments create a hook in the audience’s minds and hearts. They tend to be visual in nature and give the audience insights that supplement solely auditory information.
Recommnending Resonate from garr reynolds on Vimeo.
Garr Reynolds- Google Authors
Presentation Zen http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/340317
View more presentations from Fabian Crabus
Flipboard iPad just flipped me!
I have played( always how I learn best) with Flipboard on the iPad and was very intrigued. The modular nature of building your publication means your content and the posts from favorite feeds can be interwoven. The square panels of content provide a clean and crisp canvas for the colored thumbnails streamed/embedded from blogs or news services. The iPad display makes everything look good but this model of delivery is the kicker. Flipboard is very versatile but now I really wish I could connect iPad to VGA so I could use this as a strong teaching tool. IPad2? Oh I wish! Not yet! I’m going to get some class to give it a try with some project like …? Pass my iPad around and Have kids add their own panel on a theme or topic. Then browse the Flipboard with the class.
BCTLA survey-working and learning in public school libraries
Chronic underfunding is creating severe inequities in school libraries, report finds
A decade of underfunding has compelled teacher-librarians and parents across BC to become fundraisers for their children’s school libraries, together raising more than $1.2 million to purchase books and electronic learning resources in 2009–10.
That’s only one of the worrisome facts reported in the BC Teacher-Librarians’ Association 29th annual survey of working and learning conditions in public school libraries.
While most schools raised up to $3,000 last year for library resources alone, 24 schools raised between $5,000 and $10,000, and one school was able to raise an astonishing $50,000. These figures point to the growing inequities between public schools in low-income neighbourhoods and those in affluent areas.
“Equity of opportunity to learn is fundamental to a democratic public education system, so this report serves to ring the alarm bells that one of our key principles is threatened by the chronic underfunding of schools and their library services,” said BCTF President Susan Lambert. “Here is concrete evidence of the importance of teachers being able to negotiate teaching and learning conditions with the employer. These issues will be of vital importance as we go to the bargaining table this spring.”
Heather Daly, president of the BC Teacher-Librarians’ Association, noted that as a group, teacher-librarians have been the hardest hit since the cuts began in 2001. “We have lost 25% of all teacher-librarian positions across BC,” she said. “Despite tremendous challenges, our members are continuing to serve students well, running creative programs, hosting reading clubs, and providing crucial expertise for children growing up in an information society.”
Both Lambert and Daly called on premier-designate Christy Clark to read the report and listen to the voices of teacher-librarians, whose services are so important to students’ success at school and in their future careers. Here is a sampling of the comments contained in the report:
“We have no money for books. Zero. We have a [Parent Advisory Council] that is already stretched to its limits trying to replace our unsafe playground.” “I feel so lucky that this school has wealthy clientele, and parents who can and do assist with book fairs, as well as total teacher support.” “Libraries feed democracy and give students a safe place to figure out who they are and who they will be. Libraries have always been for me a place of solace and I fear that we are losing ourselves as we continue to cut funds and staffing to libraries in the province.”
To read the report in full, go to: http://bctf.ca/bctla/pub/reports/wlc/0910WLCreport.pdf
Early gifts today…students inquiry
Via Evernote:
Students Collaborate with Building Bibliography Online
Sometimes teens teach me things when they get the chance to explore and choose their tools. Mrs. Clarke’s Socials 11 class are busy doing research into the 20′s and 30′s in Canada. Teacher-librarian Ms. Bede , worked out criteria for the task’s evaluation- which included a complete Works Cited page. We’ve been using our school’s NoodleTools account and encourage students to use various features of the web service. We’ve also been emphasizing the value of building their independence while researching but never at the detriment of collaborating or knowing when and where to seek help.
Well Andrea and Nadine sure developed that today. They logged into NoodleTools and found a beta feature with GoogleDocs. So while they worked on their project together they also were sharing/editing the SAME bibliography page of their sources. They drilled in and tried it out using their Gmail accounts all on their own. (the literateowl was no where to be seen- busy on his knees inside a photocopier! ) Seeing their laptop screens with the same working copy of citations while they talked out their content was a pretty cool moment in TL Friday. Great job girls!
Meanwhile Madison was working on her Fashion theme of the 1920s developing a presentation. She obviously has the artistic eye and style because her slides and visuals were stunning. I was very impressed. I don’t see that quality at her age often. Lovely exploding 3d oblique pie graphs -Zen like!
We had some other kids embedding video clips into their slides. In fact one boy found an old online tutorial of mine that I forgot about and said it worked. Navigating around Microsoft’s PPT Developer Tab can be messy. I wish I could get them trying other apps and platforms…but he was excited about learning a bit of scripting.
A good day was had by all. The only downer to these terrific research skills and content creation was poor Mrs. Clarke was home sick and missed her own students! 
http://www.noodletools.com/login.php
Reading now- Made to Stick, C.Heath
Stanford Graduate School of Business professor outlines the approach that makes a message stick.
The book covers a wide range of application to concepts of provoking thought that lasts. eg. “the elementary-school teacher’s simulation that actually prevented prejudice”. I’ve wondered about this concept for decades. How do my messages impact and last?
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die | Hardcover
Dan Heath | Chip Heath
January 2, 2007 | Random House Publishing Group
Psychology / Business & Economics / Strategic Planning / Management
Chip’s research examines why certain ideas—ranging from urban legends to folk medical cures, from Chicken Soup for the Soul stories to business strategy myths—survive and prosper in the social marketplace of ideas. These “naturally sticky” ideas spread without external help in the form of marketing dollars, PR assistance, or the attention of leaders. A few years back Chip designed a course, now a popular elective at Stanford, that asked whether it would be possible to use the principles of naturally sticky ideas to design messages that would be more effective. That course, How to Make Ideas Stick, has now been taught to hundreds of students including managers, teachers, doctors, journalists, venture capitalists, product designers, and film producers.
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About:
Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas–business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others–struggle to make their ideas “stick.”Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the “human scale principle,” using the “Velcro Theory of Memory,” and creating “curiosity gaps.”
In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds–from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony–draw their power from the same six traits.
Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures)–the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of “the Mother Teresa Effect”; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas–and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.
