I love to pull in non educational industry bloggers in my A list reading because they inspire me and move me in directions I would not have gone. It helps me avoid “group thinkitis” in my teaching and get past just what the educational industry is saying.
I've been reading Garr Reynold‘s Presentation Zen for a while and have learned a lot about visual communications. (His quotes are inspiring too.)
I often blog about the importance of body language, voice, and enthusiasm in the classroom. In my blog posting, the Overlooked Lethal Weapon of Teaching, I quote Rose Polchin, a communications consultant, who says that the actual words we say are only 7% of communications!
As I teach my students presentation skills, I really emphasize this point! (In fact, one of my pet peeves is monotone teachers who drone on while seemingly oblivious to the fact that their students are asleep!)
The new blog posting, The power of the visual, over at Presentation Zen is another in a long line of very inspirational and inspirational posts I've read over there. It discusses the use of thirds as you lay out a presentation in PowerPoint and is going to be a must read hyperlink for my PowerPoint module that I will teach next spring.
Garr joins my other non-educational industry favorites Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users and Guy Kawasaki. Both Kathy and Guy have skyrocketed in their Technorati ratings and I expect the same great things from Garr. If you give presentations of any kind, you simply must read PresentationZen.
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