Presentation Tips to Increase Engagement & Connection – Ep 30

In this Episode:

Mike is joined by UTB trainers, Nicole, Adrian and Paul to dissect the anatomy to discover what makes an engaging presentation. Whether you’re presenting live or online, speaking with parents, students, or other teachers, you’ll discover what works best and the tools, tips and mindset you need to help you connect with your audience more effectively and get the buy in you want.

We discuss:

• building connection and engagement with your audience
• the place of the traditional slide deck
• how to leave people feeling supported and valued
• the digital tools that can elevate your training

For more episodes of the Outclassed Podcast go to utb.fyi/outclassed

Podcast Episode Highlights:

0:43 Meet the guests – Nicole, Adrian, and Paul
5:46 The fear of death and the fear of speaking to people, Mike’s horror story
7:51 What do you do when it all goes wrong?
10:20 Adrian diffuses angry teachers
11:49 Landing a message
15:44 The one thing
17:12 The “Head Fake”
18:04 Preparing to present
19:52 Build authentic connection with your audience
29:42 Recognise your audience’s worth
30:32 Country or Bulgarian folk music?
32:32 Party poppers and rules of engagement
33:37 Presentation vs Interaction
40:30 The value is never in the content
43:10 Instantaneous feedback
46:33 Presentations are like sales calls
49:00 Digital tools to foster collaboration and interaction in person OR remotely
58:24 Are four screens better than one?
1:02:35 Four top tips presenting

Resources and links mentioned:

Transcript:

Mike Reading:  00:10
All right, well, so welcome back to the OutClassed podcast. It’s great to have you listening in today. And today I’ve got three very special guests with me, we’ve got Nicole Brown I’ve got Adrian Francis, who’s actually come up on Zoom, we’re recording this on Zoom, and you might want to check out some of the, the video footage from today on YouTube. But he’s come in as me as well. So you’ve obviously logged in with my account, which is awesome. And then we’ve got Paul Hamilton who’s not trying to impersonate anybody. And he’s on he’s on the call as well. So rather than me introducing you guys, I thought I might just let you introduce. So we’re probably should go ladies first. So Adrian over to you.

Adrian Francis:  00:53
Oh, cause that’s rude. And that’s now being recorded and digital is forever. We know that.

Mike Reading:  01:00
So Nicole over you have to introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you. And then we’ll go from there.

Nicole Brown:  01:05
No, I think I’m in for an interesting next hour. So yeah, I’m Nicole. I am based in Auckland, New Zealand. Ex primary teacher, turn UTB trainer coming up on a year, actually in a couple of months. That’s like flown by. And my jam is kind of in that science and tech space when it comes to teaching. And yeah, so I loving what I get to do over here, with our NZPLD schools, and more recently, and that sort of Microsoft and Minecraft space as well.

Mike Reading:  01:37
Excellent. You’ve got a bit of an accent that’s barely detectable.

Nicole Brown:  01:42
I always forget, I always forget, this is how I usually open presentations. So this is topical. Because I like to call it Skiwi. It’s kind of like a good game to get people guessing throughout the presentation. Like where they think I’m from. But yeah, it is a bit of an amalgamation because I’ve been in New Zealand now as long almost as long as I lived in Scotland. So it’s Yeah. Skiwi.

Mike Reading:  02:08
Yeah, very cool. Adrian, over to you.

Adrian Francis:  02:11
Alright, so I’m Adrian. Thanks, Mike. Thanks Nicole. Yeah, I’m based in Adelaide in South Australia. I’ve been with UTB for fire, like officially five years. But just for the record, Mike and I would drop a little bit of paper about how it could work before anyone else was employed. And now I’m hanging my head on that. So that’s cool. I’m an ex teacher from. As I said, from Adelaide, I used to teach maths and drama. So I was a bit of a combination. But when I kind of jumped out of education straight to this, I was kind of like a DP in school. So really looking at curriculum and how that works in the classroom. And always interested in how tech can make learning better not just be a nice shiny tool on the side of the classroom or on the wall. So that’s kind of where I am been here for five years or so. Kind of train in all three platforms. Not as much apple now that Paul’s here, thankfully, a lot of time in the Microsoft space, but I’ve been dabbling my foot back into my foot by toe back into the Google workspace area was what we did last year in the APAC region, and work with currently doing for a corporate client in Australia.

Mike Reading:  03:15
Yeah, awesome. Very good. Thanks, Adrian. And Paul. Thanks, Mike.

Paul Hamilton:  03:19
Yeah, I’m similar to both Adrian and Nicole. Got that education background that really good that good grounding those fundamentals of how people learn and how kids learn. And I, I don’t think we’re that different as adults, which is, which is pretty good. Yeah, so my background primary teacher, as well, but have done some secondary work as well, which is great. I have a real love of immersive tech, specially augmented reality and virtual reality. Love all things Apple, enjoy working with Apple teams around the world. And yeah, really enjoying, I guess that that blend at the moment being in Queensland. So I’m basically on the Sunshine Coast, really enjoying that blend between getting into schools and the face to face, which I love. But also making the most out of that remote learning as well. And what we can do with the tools, the tools that we’ve got access to and how we can really, I guess, flip it a little bit and look at the positives of what we can do remotely that we might not be able to do face to face, which is super exciting.

Mike Reading:  04:20
Yeah, awesome. That’s a great segue into today’s topic. So today, I thought we’d just unpack a little bit of what we’re seeing in terms of trends of what schools and businesses are asking for. And quite often they when it comes to that technology piece, there’s a there’s an element of how do we just use this tool to collaborate or to communicate, or to get out to get our thoughts across. But really, we wanted to unpack and this is something that we were going to discuss anyway. So for a little bit of context, we’re recording this on a Friday afternoon, slash evening. We’ve got a couple of beverages out we’re just having a bit of fun with it. But it was something that we were discussing as a team anyway. And so it was like, you know, what let’s just record this, and we’ll turn it into a podcast. And so this will be raw and unfiltered. There are some personalities in the room. We may agree we may disagree where you get to find out. But really, we’re just one of those things we wanted to do personally was just talk about what we’re finding is working. And we thought we’d just share that conversation with you the listener. So, yeah, basically, I wanted to just kick off with a bit of a horror story, I think, one of the main things about presentation skills, because quite often when you go to a session on presenting well, that talk about a tool deck and how to do your slides and make it pretty and, and all of that sort of thing, but how to communicate and how to project your voice or how to stop things from being too monotone, like change your your pitch. But really, I think what sits underneath all of that is whole concept around mindset. And so I think if you talk to somebody, they usually say that they’ve got two fears in life, one is death, and one is speaking in front of people. And if you’re a teacher, you’re probably overcome a little bit of the speaking in front of people fear, but at the same time, there’s a, there’s a whole world of difference between running a class and actually presenting in front of somebody, whether that’s your own peers. In fact, I think presenting in front of your own peers, if you’re at school, and you’re trying to lead change is harder than if you’re trying to speak to somebody else. But there’s definitely this mindset game and I can remember being in America, and I took Mark on a trip Mark’s one of our other trainers at Using Technology Better. And we’re working in a school district over there doing some Google training for them. And I remember that was the first time market ever been to America. So initially, I like I drove everywhere, and just got him used to sitting there and looking at the way the traffic flows being on the wrong side of the road, and so on. And then he dropped me in the school and had to go just a couple of blocks from one school in the district to the next school. And as, as I was there at the school, I just sent him a quick message on Google Hangouts and just said, Hey, Mark, just checking you out there, okay, because it was the first time we’ve driven the car. He’s like, I’m alright, but I had an accident on the way. And it was just as I was about to start presenting, and I didn’t have time to follow up, I didn’t have time to ask him questions. And I can just remember that presentation being like one of the worst presentations I’ve ever presented, because in the back of my mind, I’m thinking about him. insurances, like all the things about being in a foreign country and how we’re going to figure this thing out. And I’m also presenting to a brand new group of teachers, and they fly me all the way from Australia, New Zealand, I was living in New Zealand, and so find me all the way from New Zealand to present in it, and if bombed, it was not what I would consider a great presentation. And the whole thing is you get inside your head. And then once it starts to unravel, it’s so hard to pick up those pieces and put something back together again, and to gain that confidence back. And I think we’ve all had those experiences where in our head, we’re just going, this is not working the way I planned it. So I wanted to ask you guys initially, when you’re in those situations, what some of the strategies you might use, or the things he uses just to try and pull yourself back in the moment. And so make it work.

Paul Hamilton:  08:14
I’ll jump in, I’ll jump in Mike. All right, good. But it’s true. I remember going up to a comedy festival up in Noosa. And the comedian got heckled really early on in in the in the routine and she lost it, she she really didn’t recover from that, you could just say she was a little bit off. And that does happen. And once it pops in your mind, one of the things I normally do is, if I’ve got something in my presentation where I try to the audience and get them to reflect or think that gives me a little bit of time to kind of refocus a little bit. So it might be on slide eight, where I say write speak to the person next to you about a time when it didn’t go well or kind of flip it a little bit, which gives you time then just to reset your mindset a little bit. And everyone’s still engaged with what you are going to do a little bit later. But it just gives you that kind of opportunity to reset.

Nicole Brown:  09:09
I think for me, I am a pretty open book. So if something is appropriate to share, of course there are times when it’s not, but just being like raw and unfiltered and just saying, Hey, guys, listen, this is the reality of what’s just happened. Do you mind just grabbing a cup of tea and give me five minutes, just check in and we’ll be right back is I think you’ve got to kind of remember that nobody in that room wants inherently wants you to fail, that they are there to learn something as much as you are there to do a job. So if you can just be honest, I think honesty is the best policy applies in that scenario as well.

Mike Reading:  09:50
That is so true. Because you know, the one thing that I didn’t do when I was in that session in America was I didn’t tell them what had happened. So they had no clue I will be the professional going out during my presentation, in fact, I think I’d already started, I just glanced at my messages and saw the message come through. And rather than just stopping and being honest, and saying, Well, I’ve just sent a message has kind of thrown me for a six. I’ve tried to just hide it and keep running with it. And it wasn’t the right approach to take at all. Yeah, which was, which is really interesting.

Adrian Francis:  10:20
Yeah, and I find sometimes, depending on like, Paul said, you know, try to reset try to have something that you can throw to. So it just gives you that breathing space, but also gives the people on the other end breathing space as well. I had a one where, obviously, the leadership team had decided that they were going to go down a certain pathway, but they hadn’t told anyone. And so one of the leaders just said, this is what we’re going to be doing, starting next week. And so I’m staying there in front of them. And they got, you know, 85 angry teachers and on the one went to be leading the workshop. So I just throw it open. So okay, what are the positives and negatives of that, spend a minute chatting to the person next to you, that was enough to defuse it. So then I could go on and kind of do my bit that I needed to. Also, that kind of thing wasn’t my issue, it was the school issue. So I could have taken it on myself, and tried to wrestle it through or just let it kind of dissipate, and keep on rolling. So sometimes you need to separate yourself a little bit between what is your problem? And what’s their problem and not kind of biding their politics? Because often there are politics involved, and things like that, as well, especially for that conversation. Definitely was those politics as well.

Mike Reading:  11:24
Yeah, that’s a really good point, too. So sometimes you’ve got to communicate things that you don’t necessarily believe in and or you’ve been asked to present a message to staff, especially if it’s your own staff. And then you’ve got to sort of, you know, what they say is like, when we’re behind closed doors, we can argue it out. But when we’re in front of people, we’re we’re united team, and it’s just finding that language and that authenticity, to to be able to do that in a way that actually means and lands. So in terms of landing a message, what some of the techniques you guys use in terms of your preparation, or your thought process or something like that, to, to sort of help figure out what is it that I want to say, how am I going to craft these? How am I going to let it flow? Is there a particular process that you guys go through, or a framework that you might use in terms of just preparing that presentation,

Adrian Francis:  12:13
I’ll jump in before anyone else does before the Scottish kiwi, I, I tend to rehearse what I’m going to do, it sounds stupid, or rehearse in my head. So I’d ride my bike a bit. So I’ll jump on my bike, go for a ride, and I’ll rehearse through a day or a module or a unit or something that I’m going to do. So I know how it runs. And then I’ll often use parts of other workshops I’ve run to link them all together when I run another one. So nothing’s ever really new, except for that first time that you do it. And then I try to I hate death by PowerPoint, or death by Google slide deck or give by keynote, if you’re an apple person, would you ever want, I just don’t think that’s appropriate. So what I tend to do is turn to use images a lot. So then I can tell a story. And I can link things together and then put that put use that story to link the learning in there as well. So that’s kind of how I do it also means that gives you flexibility in there. If you’re showing an image, then you can then just kind of tell a story about the image and how it relates to what you’re training on. And then teach the skill associated with it. Having words on a screen is hopeless, because people read it, you read it, that’s just pointless. Why would you do that. But what I’ve have learned is that because I do use a lot of images in their presenter notes, write down what those images are for, because often you’ll prepare them well in advance and you get there and go bang, and there’s a picture of a person holding banana. While they’ve got a donkey hanging on with their right hand, you think there’s got to be a reason behind this. I have no idea until you kind of make it up. That’s not very good when that happened. So just kind of cover yourself.

Nicole Brown:  13:40
I like what you said about the story, Adrian. And I know Mike, you’re big on like having that one thing that people come back to that what’s your one thing? It’s a lot to think about when I’m constructing whatever the content as or whatever the presentation is, write it like a story. It has a beginning, middle and end that also has like a moral, every story has like the moral to the story. And so that’s your one thing that you want to come back to. And if you put something in there and think, actually, that’s irrelevant to the moral of the story, then bin it, why is it and they’re actually adding value? Or is it just kind of clouding the way for the character to get through? Because otherwise, it’s information overload. And people check out when there’s too much we know.

Adrian Francis:  14:27
Yeah, and I’m gonna cut before Paul

Nicole Brown:  14:31
need like a little buzzer.

Adrian Francis:  14:35
Because at the end of the day, if you’re doing like you’re doing face to face, you can tell that story, you can see how the audience is going and you can play the room a little bit. But when you’re doing remote work, which a lot of us are doing now, those extended stories are just extending that screen time for people. So you need to kind of kind of get a bit of a blend there about how that works. I think that’s a really important way as well to kind of keep that in the back of your head when you’re kind of presenting as well. So Paul, We’ll turn now. Sorry.

Paul Hamilton:  15:00
Hey, thanks. I agree. Yeah, I was just gonna say that you’ve got that message, or you’ve got that really big takeaway you want to get to at the end of the narrative. And I think for me, what I try and do is help the participants get there without you, and try and have those reflective questions, because I think connections made by individuals is much more powerful to say, Hey, this is the big message of today. So if they can find that message, through some questioning through little stories, and getting them to, I guess, self reflect about the importance in their life that kind of takes to self. I think that’s really powerful compared to someone that just says, Here’s a story. This is the takeaway, and this is the message.

Mike Reading:  15:37
Yeah, that’s such a that’s a tweetable. Right there. I think, Paul, that whole connection piece. And I think for me that one thing is really important, I always work out, what’s the one thing I want them to walk away knowing. And it doesn’t even have to be. So we’re technology trainers. And I did some training today, for online for a large school in Oakland. It was Microsoft Teams, and it was getting them started in teams. And my one thing was that you may be feeling overwhelmed. But this is a long process. Now, that’s got nothing to do with Microsoft Teams. It’s got nothing to do with OneNote. It’s got nothing to do with the technology. But the one thing I wanted the teachers to walk away from at the end of the hour that I had with them was that yes, I’ve just shown you the big picture of all the things that you can do in teams and the way that you could use it with your students. And you’re probably feeling a little bit overwhelmed right now. But don’t worry, we’re going to be on a journey with you. And we’re going to show you what you need when you need it. And we’re going to help you along the way. So even though I’m showing them some tech stuff, and everyone was thinking that the presentation was about technology, that really was about just getting the teachers to feel comfortable to just relax a little bit and to embrace it. And the reason for that is that the outcome that we want is not that the teachers know all these wonderful things you can do inside Microsoft Teams, what we want them to do is be relaxed and open to trying something new. And so I went down that story pathway of taking care of those fears, especially at the beginning of the year with overwhelm, and then all the technology stuff comes secondary to it. So quite often the message is not the message, it’s it’s a message behind the message that really makes a difference.

Adrian Francis:  17:13
Yeah, and Randy pouch who wrote the book, the last lecture, so look it up on YouTube, talks about the head fake, where you’re delivering something, but the head fake is actually delivering something completely different. Like in basketball, you don’t watch your watch where the bodies go, you don’t watch where the head goes, because the head way, one way the body will go the other way, if you follow that, you’re not going to go to the right spot. So the head fake, for me is what you know, if I’m given something to do with a sheet, and I want them to be more efficient, I’m not going to tell them to be more efficient in sheets, I’m going to take them on a journey so that when they get to the end, they go, Oh, I was more efficient. So they’ve learnt that through that journey. And that means you got to think a little bit about where you want to take them. And also in the back of your head, work out what goes wrong. If something does go wrong, whichever you’re going to take So choose your own adventure, you can change it a bit as you go through. But the big picture is, what are they going to get away? At the end? What are they going to talk to the the partner about when they get home?

Mike Reading:  18:04
Right? So Nicole, you guys do a lot of prep for your sessions, like Adrian said, he goes over it in his mind. Like, that’s the last thing I would do personally improving my personality that would that would crush me. Only interested but like, what’s your approach to it?

Nicole Brown:  18:20
Um, I think for me, it’s probably training dependent, like I said, of being like the company, just under a year. So depending on what the tool has as the extent of my knowledge, and also confidence and training. So if it’s something that I feel not so confident with, then I am going to do that I’m going to go away and do the work. Because I really think that, like you just emphasize we’re trying to build trust. And I think trust from our audience or participants comes from knowing your stuff. So if I’m sitting in a room, and the person in front of me knows what they’re going to say, without a slide deck or without the resources that they can talk to fluidly and answer my questions, then that trust there for me, like I’m like, it doesn’t matter if you know, they slip up or if there’s a tech issue. I know they’ve got it. So depending on what it is as the as the level of prep for me, if it’s something that I know really well, then my prep ball lion, what is the application for that customer? So as the resources that I can be putting together that’s going to support them, like you touched on Mike that whole letting them know the expectation that this is not a one and done. This is a journey and a partnership. And it’s not just a point in time. So knowing that we’re there to support them beyond that, I think you can really prepare for them. So yeah, depends on the context for me, I think.

Paul Hamilton:  19:52
Yeah, and for me, I know Adrian and myself. We’re doing a lot of online at the moment, Mike and one of the things I’m finding I’m putting on A lot of thought into is just how do I make a connection with the audience that the participants, and then how to make it relevant a little bit like Adrian said that death by Keynote or PowerPoint. So just an example of that. So what I tried to do actually, today was what we normally do at UTVs, we asked that question about something about their lives where they would like to travel, if they could, they could actually travel on but what I started to do now is actually asked everyone in the chat, what they’re working on at the moment, what’s something that’s point, you know, and center what they’re doing. So one of the teachers today, Emily said that she’s working with a class on about me projects, getting to know my grade six students. And so I kind of made a note of that, I asked that in the chat. And I had all these different sub areas that people were focused on with their teaching. And then what I tried to do because it was iPad related training, is I tried to come back to Emily’s idea and say, Hey, in Keynote Did you know you could take a photo, change the opacity and draw over the top. And so what I hope to do in the tech part of the session was to make their voices heard, but then come back to the tech and what they were working on to make it more relevant for them. Now, I couldn’t do that with all 60 people. But I think knowing that the facilitator is listening to them, and then trying to adjust on the fly of what they’re doing. I think that’s an incredibly powerful thing to do.

Mike Reading:  21:26
Yeah, and I don’t think like, if you’re sitting here listening to this, and saying, Well, this is great, I don’t go and present in other schools or in other organizations, you really need to listen to that part. Because when you’re speaking to your own people, you’ve got to work even harder that connection. And what happens is that quite often, people, like you’re going as a teacher in that school. And you’ll just assume that you know, everybody, and everybody knows you, and you know, so you just get up and you start this show your, your, your presentation, or whatever you’ve got prepared. But what you’re missing is the opportunity to make a connection at a different point. And so one of the things that we always talk about is that people don’t do what they say, but they do what they value. And so if you’re trying to shift practice, one of the things that you need to do is you need to shift the value, not the mind. So you can teach somebody, all the things, but if you haven’t shifted the value of what they’re doing, they’re not going to do it. And so you need to understand what their pain points are. You need to understand what they’re trying to achieve, and then marry what you’re doing to what they’re trying to do because and then you’ve got that marrying a value. So I think, Paul, what you shared there about taking that time to connect it to real world is super important. And if I was in a school, speaking to that, my colleagues, I would be trying to understand specifically what they were working on that weak or a problem that they had to solve what was frustrating them or holding them back, and then I would speak directly to that, rather than, hey, I want to show you a jam board. And here’s all the fun things we can do. And that’s all getting there introducing shapes or something. Connecting that back to real world is really important, really important.

Nicole Brown:  23:02
And exposing them, like you’re saying, having that example of a Jamboard, you can expose someone to a new tool and a non threatening way if it’s an example in context. So they’re going to be more open to trying something new if they’re like, Oh, this is the outcome. And this is just the lens that I’m looking at it through. Rather than, you know, going the other way around, going with leading with the tool, I think can be quite overwhelming for someone who’s like, I’ve never even heard of that little uncertain practice. So think or, or demonstrations, any examples, any props kind of that we use need to give the content context

Mike Reading:  23:44
and be applicable. Right. So at the moment, you guys may be seeing it, we’ve got some resources that are in shared drives. And at the moment, American someone in America right now is doing is doing a speaking tour. And they’re sharing out some of our jam board resources, because we’re getting all these Share. Share requests come through on Google Drive. And I’m like someone is showing them jam board and these cool things that they can do with elementary school kids, but they’re not showing them how to make a copy of the damn thing. And so we’re getting all these requests coming in, open up my emails in the morning is like share request, share request share request, because they think that to access that gym will then actually need full editing access to be able to do what they need to do with it. So whoever it is in America, we appreciate you sharing our stuff and given us a shout out which is awesome, but to show him how to make a copy. And so they can actually take it and use it in their classroom. So sometimes you miss that last little bit Hey, which is pretty funny. Yeah, so Nicola, I’m interested in like part in terms of that connection, like what some little tips or tricks that you’ve got in terms of being able to make that connection with somebody and being able to Yeah, draw me in, find some information about them keep their eyes on you, so to speak.

Nicole Brown:  25:03
I think a big one for me as someone who’s like early to airports, because it stresses me out if I’m not there on time, and I apply that kind of mantra to my whole life. And so for me, getting to training, early, be there early, sitting in a staff room and having a chat with people outside of a professional context as a huge one. And I think, you know, that applies online as well. If you can be there, you know, half an hour before and you don’t have another engagement on you can sit on that chair, you will get someone who’s going to jump in 15-20 minutes early, because they’re also someone who doesn’t like to be late to the airport. So that gives you just such an opportunity to get to know them a wee bit. And like Paul was saying, maybe, find out a little bit more about what they’re doing in their classroom, or in their organization, whatever it is, that you can draw on throughout the presentation. And people feed off that they go, oh, yeah, like, I can make a connection with that. I did that in my classroom. And so you then it’s it compounds. So I think that that whole getting to know the people in front of you reading the room, one that Adrian shared with me that I think it’s invaluable is using names, like can making connections by actually calling people by their name, instead of saying, Oh, you over there pointing or just pulling someone out the chair, when you’ve got a reference point, I think it makes you a lot more relatable.

Adrian Francis:  26:32
online as well, we’re finding, even saying hello to people’s names as they come into a room, as tricky as it is when they will come flooding in one spot. We got feedback this week saying how it’s so good that you actually welcomed us in, I’m thinking, all you really said was gray, Hey, guy in his head, that kind of banter going, it’s always good, because if there’s two or three people early, they feel like they’re being included and not just kind of sitting there watching something. And then when the other people join in, they know that you’re going to welcome everyone as well, it does get a bit overwhelming when 85 people turn up at the same time. But you can do that you can just do that welcome. And same as nako. I like getting somewhere just beforehand, so I can make sure everything works. So the projector or plugin that can connect into your Wi Fi, all that kind of stuff that you take for granted. When you’re at home, you’ve got to make sure that when you go to go somewhere, and you’re presenting somewhere that you test it out beforehand, it sounds really obvious, but sometimes you just don’t do it. We had one back years ago at another school that I worked at that one of the presenters was always notorious for running out running really late, just she would turn up just before we started, and we’d be ready to roll this one day, we had all the parents in there, she came in, we plugged in a laptop, went to turn on the projectors and nothing was working, we’re looking around. And then I looked up and realized all the projectors had been removed, because they were being serviced and no one told us. So we had to trouble sort that in front of all the parents. So if we had a half an hour, we probably want to come up with a bit of a more elegant solution. So just that kind of stuff, and then it can calm you down. So then you can work and people can relate people have a bit of a joke and chat with people before they get there. Rather than being tense about. Here’s my PowerPoint gonna work? Is my laptop gonna fire up? Can I connect to Wi Fi?

Mike Reading:  28:04
Yeah, I think that’s really important. Again, if you’re a teacher in your own school, be there early, make those connections. And all these little things make a big difference in your own in your own house. Because if anything, you got to do these, like 10 times better than when you’re in a guest in someone else’s school. Right. But what’s some of the things you use? I know, Adrian, and you’ve worked and workshops and different ideas in terms of that engagement and music lists and all sorts of things like that. unpack some of your thinking around?

Paul Hamilton:  28:32
Yeah, Adrian, speaking of the music, I’m not a big music person myself, but I think we talked about it in the introduction, the ability or what does remote have maybe that face to face doesn’t and I think the names is a really big thing, being able to quickly see who’s saying what making their thinking visible and attaching a name to it. And actually calling that out is so much better. I used to love going into prep in grade one classes at the start of the year when I was in a school because I don’t have name tags on. And so you could actually call out little bob and Frank and Jill and Emily. And it made such a difference their little faces kind of lit up when you use use their name. So I think when we look at face to face, and what it does give you is that quick snapshot of everyone that’s coming into the room. Adrian was like, like play school the other day, like in the magic mirrors. He was just going off with all these names, and it was just amazing. And then being able to refer back so then being able to kind of quickly scroll through the chat and say, All right, Emily, you did talk about creating graphs and how you were struggling with that and then relating it back to that person’s name, I think is super important. The other thing I did I try and do to Mike is allow somewhere in the presentation for everyone to share something that they already know. So that mindset of they’re not coming in as a blank canvas. They’re actually coming in as educators with a lot of worth and so giving that opportunity to say share one tip with keynote, share one tip with PowerPoint that you love, and you couldn’t do without, it kind of creates that atmosphere that we’re all learning together, and that other people in the chat, you know, this has been successful when other people in the chat start to answer the other participants questions. And you’ve created that culture of that I don’t think that happens organically. So I think that mindset of we’re all learners here, let’s support each other in the chat can really create a beautiful connection with the whole group.

Adrian Francis:  30:32
So circling back to that, that music piece, so what I normally do as I give them a form, like a Google form, or a Microsoft form to fill out, and that’s my headache, is that I want them to learn how to use a form. So I’ll get them to use one beforehand and show you how you can use it, they then pick the music, and then I play that back. And then I often will set a task to be the length of a song. So I look down on my list and go well that that song goes for three minutes. 45. So I was like This task can take three minutes 45 I don’t have to worry about the time, that song takes care of it. And then it kind of gets me involved as well. A couple of hints is I did once where someone railroaded the form and chose country music and everyone thought that was quite inappropriate. But most people were singing along to the country songs because they knew them, which is just bizarre. But I’ve also put down a bit of a joke Bulgarian folk music, and I was in school last year, and they all chose it. And it’s like, sorry, for the Bulgarians were singing here. Probably not the best to have as background music for a workshop. So now I’ve pulled that off. And the most popular one, if you’re worried is, is the 80s is the at the moment because that’s the demographic of the teachers and it’s normally around when they’re between about 14 and about 18. That’s that that’s the timeframe they pick for their songs, because it links back to a really good time in their life. So it’s nice to link it back to that as well.

Mike Reading:  31:48
So just unpack that, Adrian, what you do is you ask you put them in a form and say what is like name a bit like you give them a list of songs to choose from, or you just give them, give them an era.

Adrian Francis:  31:59
Give them an era. So it is 70s-80s-90s, whatever, and they pick it and then I can show the graph coming in and show them how the data is coming in, how we can pull it apart. And then we can if we’re doing spreadsheets are linked to a sheet, we can do stuff with averages, all that kind of rubbish as well. So and then I’ll link it back to the classroom if they’re going to use this stuff in the classroom as well.

Mike Reading:  32:17
Very, very clever. That’s great. I also heard a rumor some I think, Adrian or maybe it was Paul, were party poppers start to make a bit of an appearance during a session what happens?

Adrian Francis:  32:32
I give out party poppers. And then one of my slides is just rules engagement. And so basically, if you have an idea that you haven’t thought of before, then you can pull the party popper, if there’s something you can think about that you apply to your classroom, that’d be really good, you can use the party popper. If you’re thinking about lunch, you can pull the party popper. And if you’re just really bored, you can use it as well. So that’s the rules of engagement. So often, when you hit an aha moment, which they have seen something new for the first time, then they pull the party popper, and it’s just great hearing them go off around the room, as well. So it’s quite a good kind of way of doing it. Just go buy them from cheapest chips, and just where you go, just hand them out. It’s really exciting. It’s fun.

Mike Reading:  33:10
What do you do? If you have someone at the end of your session? Who hasn’t pulled the string yet on the party popper? Is that like a major letdown? Or what do you do?

Adrian Francis:  33:17
It’s weird, because some people want to because they don’t want to try to noise or a mess and other people just just just don’t do it. So don’t buy like if you’re going to do a workshop for 100 people. And you’ve got three or four workshops during the week. Don’t buy 300 party poppers only buy a lot for the first one because some people will hand them back and you can reuse them.

Mike Reading:  33:34
me Yeah. Expert Tip, right. They’re awesome in terms of presentation skills, like have you had Do you guys have find you a bit of a balance between PowerPoint content, Keynote content, or hands on like for me, like today’s session, I had an hour I had four slides. To have them was just one of them was introducing me. One was showing how teams was the central hub of everything. And two, and then I had another two that showed a presentation that I couldn’t show because I was actually presenting and you can present your presentation. So I wanted to show on what it was like presenting inside teams where the buttons were, that everything else was completely hands on and live guided to like where do you guys bounce in terms of live demo versus slide decks and assets and resources and things like that.

Nicole Brown:  34:26
I like to be very upfront at the beginning of any presentation I do that. One for the people who are like wanting to furiously take notes because they want to learn the slides will be available after the presentation. So you don’t need to write everything down. Just try and be present. But also just as like use them yeah more as a resource more of like a supporting backup to what I’m doing. Like if you can get people I mean it’s obviously difficult if you’re remote trying to get them active like physically. But if you’re encouraged that taking little breaks But if you’re in person, for me, it’s really around, getting them end to those interactive sort of activities where they’re creating something together where they’re moving around, because that’s the real golden time where you can float around and have those deeper, contextual conversations. But we were at a teacher holiday last week, and we’re really lucky to have two trainers. And we really, one got to know everybody a little bit better. So we try, I usually try and kick off with something like that near the beginning, and throw them into something right away, because it usually throws them off, they think they’re going to sit there and listen for a while. But if you’re like, nope, here we go, we’re gonna get into something, they’re a lot more alert and engaged. But to Yeah, give us good context, again, for the rest of the session. And let us kind of divert to what was going to be useful for them and their skill, and actually just go with that. So I think a lot of it, like when I started, I plan out the lovely slide deck to be super organized, and then not even look at the majority of them, because I found something that I had a really good idea for, or they went on a bit of attendance. And so that was more authentic to what they were actually trying to achieve outcome wise, during that, you know, diverting off the beaten path. So for me now, more that I have more experience is minimal presenting and more kind of hands on. And just using that as a sort of backup, I guess.

Paul Hamilton:  36:35
Yeah, and I, I agree, Nicole, I think that learning by doing because we do tech training, the learning by doing is super important. And not just watching, I think more and more with Well, I’m certainly doing workshop kind of based training, where you’re working with a group of teachers, maybe over four or five afternoons. And so it becomes then more project based. And so what we try and do with the project based workshops is run them through a fun little thing. Let’s say I’m, I’m creating a Jenga simulation in AR. And so we’ll do it together, we’ll create the same project. But then we stop at the end of it, we reflect and make the connections with right, we’ve looked at physics, we’ve looked at moving 3d objects. Now where does that suit your current curriculum and get them to join the dots, I think that’s really powerful is they come along on the journey with you, they build something together. And it might be a little bit different, but it’s quite similar that way, you know, they’ve got all of the skills, but then you give them that time to make the connections and say, I could use that with this. And I could do that with this. I think that’s really important too.

Nicole Brown:  37:43
I think just touch on that before I’m jumping in front of you, Adrian, I know as as a teacher setting in those sessions, if I know I’m going to be on a presentation or training all day, I’m thinking, when do I get time to do my planning, when do I get time to actually be ready for the students that are going to be in front of me tomorrow morning. So if I can be doing that, and the session guided by an expert facilitator, who knows, you know, all these amazing options for what it could do in my classroom, and I get time to build that up during the session. And I’m just going to be completely focused.

Adrian Francis:  38:20
That kind of has changed what I was about to say Nicole. But anyway, um, we in the last lot of online training we did for a school, which is a four days PD, we ended up having a rotation of workshops. But in every workshop, we had a sandpit time where they could play and develop something they’ve just seen, so they can take it into the classroom the very next day. And that works really well. So they might see something in OneNote, or informs or whatever they want to do. And then they’ve got time, which is 45 minutes, or whatever, to actually develop it further. So they’ve got a resource that they can take away with them, which I find really, really helpful. In terms of slide deck size, the slide deck for me, all it does is help me think about my train of thought and the way in which I want to take that learning journey to go. And often do, I’ve got a really good one that I use for cyber teams, and are going to get to about the third slide on that. I don’t even go to the risk, because I’ll just go into a demo because I find that having a hands on demo is really, really worthwhile. Giving them a sheet if I’m doing spreadsheets, giving them a sheet that’s like yours, so they can follow through and do exactly the same thing. So you can have everything in it, that you were gone, but blank spaces for them to fill out. So they work along with you. Something like teams, see if you can get in a tenant and throw them into a team at the same time so they can play in that space. So it’s all hands on. It’s all that experiential learning rather than listening to me talk because they can grab anything of YouTube and watch Infineon they can speed you up, they can stop you. But the beauty of leading learn is that you can tailor what you’re doing to the needs of the people there. But also value add so they can walk away with something I can use straightaway. Not something that I have to read the note in six months later, which won’t make any sense at all.

Mike Reading:  39:54
It’s so so important. Hey, and that’s, I think one of my other big tips is whatever content You think you’re going to get through, probably have it and you probably still got too much. And you guys know what it’s like, because we sit down with whoever is organizing the professional development session, they want you to cover this and this and this and this and this. And we want to like they got to know all this stuff. But if you go in there with like, that slide deck has got 57 slides in it. And you’re rushing and somebody asked you a question, you’re like, Oh, that’s a really good question. But I’m not going to get to a slide deck, and I’m not going to cover that stuff. So having you think that I’m going to run out of time and never run out of time d. So just Yeah, giving that space for thought and creativity discussion. So the value is never in the content, the value is in the application of the content. So I could walk away hearing 10 things, and not do anything with it. Or I could hear one thing and do something with it. And that’s much more valuable in my books. So that space is, as I said, all the time. And it’s what used to drive me absolutely insane when I was a teacher means you’d have these people come in, and they just run their spreadsheet, or they’d run this slide deck, regardless of what you were doing, they weren’t able to read the room. And they’d see that they lost everyone in the first 15 minutes, because it was completely irrelevant. Well, I went too fast or too slow or whatever. But on they go, because that’s the prep that they’ve done. And so we work very hard at being agile in that. And we’re always got stuff left over at the end of the session, like oh, man, I wish I hadn’t got to that.

Adrian Francis:  41:27
I’m sure you guys one of the things, they might as well as that when you’re doing face to face training, people will stay there and stay with you. And often they’ll have laptops open. And they might be doing something completely different because you bought them and they know they’re not going to get anything out of it. But you don’t know. So you just keep on going. And it’s great. And you come away feeling warm and fuzzy. In the online environment, they’ll just leave. Because I’ve got no idea. So you’ll just look up and see all these dots at the end of the session, you say goodbye to everyone. And you know, they haven’t been watching you for the last hour. But they just haven’t turned they haven’t designed out. So you’ve got to be wary of that. As well as that people are generally quite polite. And now they’ll just kind of sit there and just nod and smile or buy shoes in the background.

Mike Reading:  42:07
Yeah. So you just got to keep asking questions in chat and just asking how’s this landing for you and, and just checking in and how they’re going right, and then be ready to pivot if you need to. I think one of the things I saw yesterday, Adrian, Samantha, on training for a large corporate client in Australia was just constantly checking in seeing where they’re at asking for responses. Give me an emoji of how you’re feeling right now. And all that does, even if they’re not necessarily the brakes, their concentration because like hang on a second, they’ve stopped talking what’s going on. And it just breaks and back. And I thought that was a really good strategy that you’re using.

Adrian Francis:  42:44
It’s always good to edit, ask your content, like those kind of contentious questions like, do you like conflicts conversation view, or non conversation view in

Nicole Brown:  42:53
a grid or list person?

Adrian Francis:  42:56
Using all that comes up with and we’ve just I’ve never really like it’s been hilarious. Fortunately, I it’s worth it’s worth trying to seeing goes like, just kinda engages them I think.

Paul Hamilton:  43:08
Oh, sorry, Nicole, that I was just gonna say feedback is just that that crucial element of Teaching isn’t it. So being able to actually get that feedback is probably one of the most important things to do.

Adrian Francis:  43:20
And get your office used to quiet in teaching, we need to get our feedback at the end of the year when we do our reflection on our teaching. And sometimes by that it’s way too late. Yeah, like counting back in the summer to the kids three weeks after I finish it the maintenance. But at least online now we can get instant feedback. So that means we can build on what we’re doing. We can change what we’re doing if you need to, and take it on as a learning experience. The next time we present you’ve got in the back your head, there’s a whole lot of answers or answers to questions that people are asking. So it makes you a better presenter, because you’ve got the instantaneous feedback now, which I think is really good.

Paul Hamilton:  43:58
Yeah, I think that feedback to you the other day, Adrian, I think sorry, Nicole. Because there’s too many men in the room, you go Nicole.

Nicole Brown:  44:13
No, I was just gonna say, if you are listening to this going find the timestamp for this part of the conversation because one thing when you were talking about that feedback, Adrian, you’re like lighting up describing the conversations you were having in the chat. And I think that is so important to come back to because having those interactions as well gives you energy as a presenter. And I think when you’re on those remote calls, and sales training, you’ve done 10 times already, it can get quite monotonous. So if you’ve got a bit of interaction, a little bit of banter going on the chair, people using ridiculous emojis for silly stories. It just brings a little bit of you know, comedy to it. And I think that adds so much in terms of energy, especially if like you’re presenting an Another timezone and it’s 11pm, or the light pole, you’re up at 4am to do something, you know, you need that buy in. So I think anyway, you can foster that as is really positive.

Paul Hamilton:  45:13
And I was just gonna say absolutely turn a car is going to say that formative feedback, which we know as teachers or teachers is more important that that’s somebody that the end and everyone says it was awesome and that I was supporting Adrian the other day. And it came up where either Adrian or myself say this, is the screen big enough for you guys that are following on is there? Do we need to zoom in at all? And I? And someone said, Yes, zoom in a little bit for us, we can see what you’re doing as well. And I just thought, what if that didn’t happen until right at the end, and I couldn’t see a thing and, and so just adjusting as a trainer, getting those little tips from everyone to make sure that you know, we’re making sure it’s about them. And it’s not about us, we know the content that they don’t. It’s just super important. And I when I sitting there, Adrian listening to that, and we zoomed in and the method yep, that’s great. Let’s keep going down. I thought I’ve never heard that before. In an online presentation when I’m sitting in it. I’ve never heard someone ask, is that screen? Okay, do I need to zoom in a little bit more? And I just thought that’s a great, great tip going forward. Yeah, that’s nothing.

Mike Reading:  46:21
Yeah. Yeah, just speaking into avoid. I think here’s a little pro tip, I think, oh, I don’t know if we talked about this. Since we started recording I was saying before, but I think every presentation is almost like a sales call. I think it was worth talking about that before we hit went live on this, but because at the end of the day, we’re trying to ask people to do things, right. And so if you can get a little micro commitment, then you’re able to get a bigger commitment down the track. So there’s actually a little bit of psychology in that, so that if you ask somebody to respond or participate, even just in a small way, then you’ll be able to ask them for a bigger ask later on. And so that’s one of the reasons why whenever I start, I’m like, give me an emoji of how you’re feeling or give me a thumbs up that you can hear me, okay? Because someone will give you a thumbs up, but they might not type their name and where they are from, or you know what they’re feeling at the moment. But if I can get an emoji out of them first, then I know I can get a name out of them second, and then I can get a fear out of them third, and then I can get an action point for so we start with small steps, and then you work your way forward. And so even if you’re, again, I want to bring this back, because I know a lot of people who are listening aren’t necessarily out presenting and you’re, you’re in the trenches with your own people, finding just those little get them to raise their hand or to say nod or to say yes, or, or something is super important. So even if you’re there and you say, Have you had a good day, and everyone goes, they won’t really say anything, you just repeat yourself. And because what you want to do is you want them to say yes, or you want them to say no, because once you get them to respond once, then you can get them to respond again. And again, at the end of the day, we want them to do something with our training, right? Not just sit there and waste 40 minutes. And listen, we want them to take action of some sort. So if you can get them to take a small action, then you can always get a bigger action later on.

Adrian Francis:  48:14
We’ll leave him with I always had the challenge of three or three things are after today, we covered 19 things we’re doing. So what are three things you’re going to do before the end of the semester. So don’t knock yourself out and say I’m gonna do 19 things before the next weeks. Like it’s like your New Year’s resolutions, you know, they bring all the fitness gear out into the, into the hole for everyone to use. And three days into the new year, they move it all back in again, because no way I actually use it. So don’t, don’t commit to a million things, just pick one thing that you can use. And then that gives you confidence that you might come back and grab something second. But the teat teachers are pushed for time that they’ve got a whole lot of other things on the dance book. So don’t say, I want you to do 19 things before next Tuesday. Just get one one that you might do. And that might just be archiving your email, boom, that’s enough to get yourself going. So those kinds of things, really simple things.

Mike Reading:  49:00
Awesome. What you one thing? All right, let’s, let’s switch gears again. And let’s talk about tools and how we get people collaborating and interacting in the session. So they’re not they’re buying shoes, or they’re not they’re scrolling Facebook or something like that. I know, Paul, you’ve done a fair bit of work in trying to get people together and get their thoughts out on paper and so on or digital paper. Like what’s your go to tool direction?

Paul Hamilton:  49:26
Yeah, so mine Mike is. So I work a lot in the Apple space. And so what that often entails is not so much Apple products, but it could be a combination of different apps that people are using on an Apple device. So I love Padlet Padlets, one of my favorites because what I can do is I’ve got a paid account, but everyone that joins my session doesn’t need one. So they can upload big video files or interesting VR files or AR files. Because for me One of the things I try and do, especially the full day workshops, is have a showcase or a celebration party at the end, where I can pull up people’s projects, their little documentaries or whatever they’ve created during the day. And we want to make sure that that’s visible, we want to make sure that their work is visible, so that we can call out skills that they’ve used, that we didn’t show, it could be calling out some soft skills that must have happened for that to occur. And the biggest thing is, they can also take that away, then. So you’ve got that resource of if anyone’s seen Padlet. It’s almost like a whiteboard. It’s just like Microsoft or jam board. But I can upload a lot of different file types. So what I can do is I can provide a lot of resources, maybe YouTube clips, digital resources. But I’ve also, and this is what I try and do, I create a column if I know who’s going to be in the session. So I might actually create a 50 columns with each person’s name on it, so that they’ve got this space, to write down questions to upload their stuff. And they really know that, hey, when I show this at the end, there’s also a little bit of guilt, a little bit of pressure, that when I go past your column, you’ve got some awesome stuff that you’ve actually created. And we don’t have a blank one sitting there. So what I found is they don’t do it, because it’s fear of embarrassment, but they actually love sharing, they love commenting on each other’s work, just like we like to be seen in a in a workshop. So I love Padlet Mike, just because it allows me to set up putting all my resources, but then give each person a place to make their learning visible.

Adrian Francis:  51:41
Right, can I share my screen, Michael? Okay, because I’m Mike as well. So because you’re awesome, Michael. So Michael, because I’m a must say this is this is a copy from from from Paul, because Paul to use Padlet. In your stuff that you’re doing Arthur year, why not? Why should I. But these are my Microsoft resources built out, I’ve got a standard Padlet that’s got everything in it. It’s got all the videos that we’ve made on how to use stuff, you can see everything stored in here. For the people who listened to this on the podcast, just imagine this is the most amazing thing seen your entire life. This is a resource that they can have afterwards. So I kind of built up a standard deck. And I just duplicate and throw everyone’s names in it when we work. So that was a hint from Paul works really, really well. Fun for engaging. But also it means that if they forget how to sort of do unlock software, they can come back and watch it later, they’d have to learn everything. So it’s really good. And they could fund to build out. And they’re really handy. And I work on every device which is good on a PC or on a laptop. While we’re talking about favorite tools. So sorry, they’re all I’ve got you off, I’m just starting to use a thing called presenter fi, which is an app inside the Apple world. And it means I can draw pictures on screen like put arrows I can drop text in just means that if I’m drawing attention to something, I don’t have to blow my mouse cursor up so big that it becomes really stupid on the screen. And I can follow where I’m going. There’s a couple of freebies in the Microsoft area that has a yellow.or, a blue dot that will follow around where you are, which is really good for drawing people’s attention to things. If you’re doing a demonstration online or in a like like spreadsheet for me, for example, I blow my cursor up too big. Sometimes it doesn’t know where that cursor is when you’re clicking on things, so it doesn’t quite work well. But if you’ve got that dot floating around, it gets rid of that problem as well. The other thing I’ve just started to do, like probably in about a week or two ago, is just to use another tool as well. But before I get to that second tool, just a couple things, if you’re presenting online, like clear desk, make sure you got plenty of room to work in, have your drinks and something close by get rid of all your abs on your window, close them all down, put yourself on Do Not Disturb if you’ve got a Mac or a PC, when you plug into a projector it knows that you are projecting presenting so automatically put you on Do Not Disturb. But when you’re doing a video call, it doesn’t do that. So go up turn off to turn on Do Not Disturb. So nothing pops in. So it’s embarrassing when your mom asked you to bring around your washing, those kinds of things that have popped up on the screen. But the last thing I’ve just started using is a thing called stream deck by avato. And Valentine make this little thing called stream deck that enables you to pre program all the keys it sounds a bit nerdy. But in those key G can pre grant program things like responses, links to websites, open up different pages. So I’ve got a whole lot of replies to questions that we get standard standardly asked in Google Sheets workshop, all stored. I’ve got all my links to my resources there. I’ve got links to share documents that we have links to the company’s websites, all those kind of things. So instead of having to type in I just hit a button it just populates straightaway automatically, which means my attention is actually at the people on screen, not looking down at my keyboard. Really good as well worth the not that I sell anything for him if they want to sponsor me. It’d be great. But I for me, it’s been probably the best thing I’ve done in terms of being able to manage the way in which things work really, really handy.

Paul Hamilton:  55:00
What was that called? Again? Adrian, the one way you are drawing on your screen again?

Adrian Francis:  55:05
That’s called that is called presenter fi. Presenter, right? Yep. So unfortunately, yeah, it’s really, really good works really well.

Mike Reading:  55:13
Yeah, I thought it was black magic when I was watching you do it the other day.

Nicole Brown:  55:18
Mine are a bit, well, one, I just have one. I want to share that as a basic one. But before that age, and you just said something that made me think about eye contact, I can’t remember what you said now got distracted with Paul’s question about what the name of it was and writing it down. But just a little thing that someone made me think about the other day with the whole, you know, you’re in person, you’re in front of people, you’re making eye contact with them to build that engagement. Are you doing that when you’re on a video call? Are you looking? Are you eye level with your webcam? looking directly at the camera, building that connection? Where you think I’m looking at you? Or am I watching someone on a tile? Or watching the chat? Or am I watching a second screen. And that’s fine. If you’ve communicated you know, I’m doing a demo on this screen. I’ve got you guys here. So if you think I’m looking away, not paying attention, just know that that’s what I’m up to. So I think that’s just a side note. But my tool that I really love for building collaboration is Flipgrid. And because it is such a universal tool, it’s you know, web based, doesn’t matter what device people are using. So it’s that video response tool, if you haven’t used it, where you can set a sort of media description of it. And then people respond with a video. And I think people are pretty used to that now, thanks to COVID. I like to get teachers using it as well, because I think it’s something that’s again, applicable right away, can take into a classroom and use it with their kids. And I introduce the students to students as I closed YouTube, and then they get to think Ah, yeah, like, come on YouTube. This is awesome. It’s got Beltre Immersive Reader. So you’ve got translating options on there, you’ve got read aloud, you’ve got all that accessibility improvement. And it’s just fun. Like you can use green screening and effect and, like we’ve used it internally to do some fun kind of stuff within our team. So it is something that’s fun for many an audience. And I think it’s a really good one to get people hands on with so you can kind of scaffold their learning and how to use it. And then they feel more confident to try that. Because it can be something that people go oh, no, I don’t know about that. That looks a bit complicated. But, you know, once you expose them to it, they go, Ah, this is easy. This is great. I love the sound of my own voice Lecky, more or less in the classroom. So it’s quite a fun one.

Paul Hamilton:  57:44
And whether it’s face to face, whether it’s face to face or online. The other thing or another great tip is just to have a QR code there as well, just for that easy access that you can put links in the chat. And they can click on it if they’re on one device. But I know that when I’m working in an iPad school, I can put up a QR code there just holding up the camera there straight into Padlet. No logins, no issues finding it. And so we can focus on the learning then I think so those QR codes in your slide deck, I think are a really good tip as well.

Adrian Francis:  58:18
And thought of that, that’s that’s actually cool. That’s yeah. All right, there are a couple of things while we’re talking about presenting and stuff. For for me at home, I run I’ve got two screens here, two monitors, so I can actually split my stuff up so I can see what’s going on. But I always run another device, at least one other device, which shows me what the participants see. Because unless you’re using certain software, or certain presentation stuff, you don’t see what they’re seeing. So you can be presenting away and they are seeing a black screen, they’re too polite to say anything. So I always have a device that logs in over there. And if we’re using a separate kind of chat, I’ll have another one as well. So I’ll have four screens up to force things that I’m looking at. And I always explain it, like Nicole said, so that they don’t think I’m being rude. But it just means I can keep track of what’s going on. We often sometimes we try to present with two trainers, which means that the experience at the other end is far better for the person because they’ve got someone answering the questions in the background and presenting with someone else you can bounce off of them and you get this banter going back and forth. So it means that your energy levels are a lot better for a longer period of time. And the other thing I’ve done which I’ve done as a demo, which tends to get people really engaged is just using turning on live captions. So if you’re doing a demonstration same PowerPoint or in Google slides we can turn on the little boys live captions also inside teams as well so they can see the live captions coming in that can be helpful for people in terms of an accessibility thing as well. But my little kind of caveat on that is just be really careful because I was talking about once how well this works with with large decks and sometimes it doesn’t quite get the vowels right. So instead of large, you go with me, and you know what you did? When you do those live captions, that word will stay in the middle of the screen no matter how much you talk or whatever, just sit there and I had a great demo. Camera it was this week, we did it with PowerPoint, I know what we did it with. And I talked about don’t do this in New Zealand, because if someone says I’ve been out painting my deck, it’s not going to come up that well. Very confusing. And it converted it on the fly. And I’m just at the guy and it was fantastic. Beautiful thing. So just be aware that sometimes technology will let you down at most appropriate place.

Mike Reading:  1:00:32
That’s classic. Well, it’s interesting cuz you say you got a new other tech King, Adrian, you love your, your take I, I’ve gone away from that. And my motto is simple. Buy everything. So when I present, I’ve got a workflow in a system where I just work off one laptop with the screen, not a JavaScript and nothing, just one laptop, remove all the tech out of it. And I’ve just got little workflows to make sure that I know what’s happening. I’m reading the room, I’m able to flick between things. Like I’ll share a screen stop sharing a screen very quickly, I’ll ask for thumbs up. And, you know, turn your microphone and tell me that you know how things are going interrupt me at any time. And I found that for me that works better because then I’m not tied to a tech stack, so to speak. And there’s wireless I’m just so sick of doing presentations when something goes wrong and you spend the first five minutes fumbling trying to get your second monitor to work or something like that. And you’ve lost the people so it’s interesting we’ve got Using Technology Better whole spectrum from me who is like ultra like slimline. Just I want to make it as simple as possible. Give me one to one thing, one message, one laptop, one screen through to Adrian who have it looks like he landed in a NASA Space Station somewhere. Sometimes when I say you’re set up. So I think Nicole and Paul, you’re probably somewhere in the middle

Nicole Brown:  1:01:51
in the middle.

Mike Reading:  1:01:53
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Tiny right.

Adrian Francis:  1:01:57
The client we’ve had this week. They’ve been they’ve come from a newsroom. So I’ve got screen envy, we’re looking behind the screens behind them. I know they’re just showing things on telly, you just think cool. How would you possibly concentrate in a world like that?

Mike Reading:  1:02:14
That’s interesting. I had a job in the the other day when you’re presenting and one of the guys in the session with Adrian was a helicopter pilot. So I was in the chat trying to save me wanted to swap jobs with me at any stage.

Nicole Brown:  1:02:26
You sound like the type of person who would also be buying shoes, Mike.

Mike Reading:  1:02:30
Yeah That’s cool. All right, just want to start to bring this to an end. So in terms of like your tips, Paul, I’m gonna pick on you first, like if you had to summarize is back to one thing that someone can take. You’re a teacher you’re about to present in a school. Maybe the one thing to think about, or the one thing to do, what would you summarize down to do you think? Yeah, so I

Paul Hamilton:  1:02:54
think I, I’d probably come back to that connection and relevance. So we’ve been talking a lot about just asking how they going, what’s happening in their life before you start. I love those little tips about okay, you’re logged in, give me some feedback. Are you ready to go give me a little thumbs up if you’re going to join along with me today. So I think just making that really strong connection without waffling shouldn’t take more than five minutes. But just make sure that participants feel like they’re being heard and that they’re part of this and not just a spectator. I think that that would be my tip.

Mike Reading:  1:03:26
Yeah, excellent agent, what are your your tip would be,

Adrian Francis:  1:03:29
I try to remember what it’s like to be on the other end. So I kind of in my head, I have two personas sitting in the room, one’s a person that just doesn’t want to be there. I’m a math teacher, I don’t he can’t tell me anything. I’m sitting with my arms folded. Or you’ve got the and I call him Brian. And then there could be someone else. Like I called Janine, who’s very enthusiastic, wants to do everything, but actually struggles massively with technology. So I try to make sure I try to talk to those two people. And remember what it’s like when someone shows you something and in your guts, it’s just churning around because you have no idea how that’s gonna work. See if it can relieve the angst and if you can do that, then I think you’ve done your job if they can’t remember how to do the tech but they feel happier about walking into the classroom the next day. That’s when I reckon

Mike Reading:  1:04:17
awesome the call bring us home with something incredibly wise.

Nicole Brown:  1:04:21
Why did I have to go last. And for me, it’s bringing the energy and keeping up throughout the whole thing. John tail off, you’ve got to remember like they are there to learn from you. And they’re relying on you to keep that momentum going. So I think just check yourself for on it. Reading the room, keeping the energy up and just like being yourself like be relatable human being and if at the end of it, they leave liking you. And that’s that great. Like you’ve built the connections, you’ve built the relationships and you’ve got a good place You’re on a good place to come back. And then, you know, impart some tech wisdom, the next time. But if you if you don’t have that, even if you have delivered a great presentation content wise and are going to remember anything.

Mike Reading:  1:05:13
Yeah, so part of that energy part is just fueling up, right? Hey, like, everyone’s had a presentation. If you do a lot of this, where you’ve just eaten the wrong sort of thing beforehand, and it’s heavy carbs or something and just halfway through, and you find yourself like going through the floor. Now, can you go near a sugar lamp, say, a sugar slob? So yeah, I think just plenty good food, water is good. I think my tip is that people always remember how you make them feel. So you’re they’re thinking it’s about content. Really. It’s not. It’s about like Paul said, it’s about connection. And just try and help them validate them as a person. I’ll never forget that time. COVID was just hitting and we were talking about this exact thing, like how are we going to pivot and do so much online and that mental strain of presenting online all day and things like that, and one of those emails coming through from a seasoned teacher who said, you know, as a seasoned teacher, I’m at top of my trade, I’m a good teacher. But now I feel like I’m an absolute idiot, because I don’t even know how to like, start a video call with my students. And I’ve gone from being an excellent teacher just feeling like an absolute ground, and obviously, paraphrasing, but she was just so down on herself and being able to just work through like a few little presentation tips. And it’s, you know, you don’t have to do all this flashy stuff. You just need to connect with the students at the end of the day, and then seeing her say, feel validated as a teacher. For me, I couldn’t care if he knew how to use a Google doc at that end of that session, so long as you’re ready to go face another day. I’m happy. So I think it’s around that how do you how do you make people feel in that session? Not so don’t make them feel stupid, make them feel empowered, make them feel like they’re relevant, that what they’re doing is good, even if they’re questions annoy the hell out of you. Like, take it on the chin be a bigger person and validate that question, because there’s something behind that. That’s worthy of a good answer, no matter how frustrated you are. So I think just being in that place of care, and relationship, and leadership is really important. All the other stuff, all the other tips we’ve talked about, they they’ll come. But it’s really about that human connection at the end of the day, whether in person or online. As we wrap up anything else from you guys, anything that we’ve forgotten any burning ideas that you’ve just thought about?

Adrian Francis:  1:07:35
Perfectly. We rehearse it, that is beautiful.

Nicole Brown:  1:07:41
Wow, we’re good at this.

Mike Reading:  1:07:44
Nothing like a bunch of presenters in a room all at the same time trying to have one person talking at a time, right? It’s always good fun. Next time, we should try and have the whole I dunno have 15 or 20 of us or whatever there is on at the same time and see what see how many words you get in, would be fun. So anyway, I appreciate you guys listening all the way to the end, hopefully, we’ve given you something to think about in terms of your presentation skills, whether you’re presenting to your class, whether you’re presenting to parents, whether you’re presenting to executive leadership team on an idea that you’ve got, whether you’re trying to do professional development in your school or to schools around you. Hopefully, this is something that you can take away and apply to your your practice. We’re definitely seeing this as a trend in in schools and Catholic Diocese and organizations that we work with, where we used to get a lot of requests for Can we come and, you know, show them how to use Google Docs or jam board or PowerPoint and so on. But now we’re starting to see a lot of requests coming through saying how do we how do we present better? How do we get our message across better? How do we start to make an impact and bring in some of these tools and use them in authentic ways. And so based on the back of a lot of those conversations I’ve been having with schools and districts and diocese, we thought this might be a really good podcast conversation to get you thinking about your presentation and what you can do. Obviously, we’d love to come in and workshop some of this with you show you what to do. We’ve got workshops happening all the time, so you can come and watch our team in action. And we’re always looking for ways to improve. So if you’ve got an idea that we didn’t cover, if you want to share anything, then by all means, put it up on the socials and tag it with hashtag outclass podcast and we’ll see that and we’d love to give you a shout out. Or you can always go to the blog at using technology better.com where this podcast will be. And leave us comment. We’ll have a bit of a conversation with you. So team, appreciate you being with us on a Friday afternoon. Or Friday evening for Nicole and again really love the work you guys do. And I will see you next time on The Outcast podcast.

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