Teach Your Children Badly!
Last week I gave up a day of my time to help develop young entrepreneurs as part of a schools enterprise day. During the day I think I learned why so many will go on to become poor presenters….
The kids (sorry students!) were great as were the teachers and their challenge was to research, design, budget and market a design for a teenage play area. When it came to marketing the kids (sorry again!) were wizards with the computer and whilst some were busy using DTP software to design tickets and flyers, others were using PowerPoint to produce a presentation. And guess what sort of presentations they prepared…
Yes you guessed it. Dull, boring slides with far too many words and few if any pictures. Their slides were their script and the result was a host of presentations that failed to reflect the creativity and energy that had gone into producing the designs and campaigns. What a pity.
How can we expect these youngsters to break away from this ineffective mold, f we continue to teach them in the same way and indeed one wonders what the presentations produced by their teachers look like.
We need to start earlier and catch these budding entrepreneurs before they get into the same habits of their current day counterparts.
HiGavin
Interesting post. I’m certainly guilty of creating dull powerpoints based on years of copy cat techniques in the corporate world. I don’t know what your relationship is with these students or teachers but if you have expertise in the area, what is the opportunity that you could help coach them to make more compelling presentations?
And if you do have some tips and pointers – have you thought about putting them into an ebook?(Or do you have one? already?) I know I would be interested.
I’m new here- I found your blog through the comment you left on self made chick. But I’ll be back!
Thanks Liz. I really appreciate your comment. Indeed I am interested in exploring how I could actually help the situation by teaching either teachers or students. Not sure yet who to approach but I’ll probably go via the Education Business Partnership in the first place. Re a booklet. I do have a free booklet. Checkout http://www.reluctantpresenter.com
Gavin