Edubury and the Art of Presenting

On Tuesday 11th June, 2013 I attended a very informal gathering of teachers, teaching assistants, academics, student teachers, learning technologists & other education related professionals. The event was called “Edubury” which provides an informal space for people to share ideas via short inputs and presentations and is seen as an informal alternative to externally driven professional development. This type of event is similar to the ones offered by “TeachMeet“. Mike Blamires, the organiser for Edubury, has posted up a short article on the event for those readers who wish to follow up on this.

I gave a short presentation, in the style of a Pecha Kucha presentation, where a single presentation consists of 20 slides that convey a single idea or message (using some appropriate imagery). Each slide is limited to 20 seconds worth of narration before you move onto the next slide – this is something I eventually learnt after my presentation on Tuesday.

[slideshare id=22939705&doc=edubury11-06-2013-130613153853-phpapp01]

Whilst I had my 20 slides each with some appropriate imagery, I then placed a number of bullet points on the slide to illustrate my point. This is really where it falls down. You cannot have 1 slide containing many ideas that need to be conveyed in 20 seconds. It is much better to have 1 slide containing 1 idea (or message) that can be conveyed in 20 seconds instead. The Pecha Kucha format is both fun and very powerful way of presenting some complex ideas in the simplest of ways in the shortest amount of time. As a Doctorate in Education student, I can see this precise format of presenting as a way of sharpening and honing into the actual crux of your research making it more succinct and to-the-point.