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Earlier this week, I attended a two-day meeting in Washington D.C. for a federal grant for which I am the evaluator. Ultimately, the meeting was useful. However, I only got to that point after a day and a half of presentation after presentation.
None of the presenters came anywhere close to Presentation Zen. To be fair, though, some of the presenters were tasked with delivering procedural information; i.e. “here’s what you need to do…” The content of their presentation needed to be transmitted and I don’t even think Jerry Seinfeld could have engaged an audience around the topic.
In the case of this meeting, there was real value in the grantees coming together face-to-face. We had a lot to share with and learn from each other. However, because we had to sit through so many presentations, there was very little time for the grantees to interact.
There is a simple solution to this problem. All of the “presentations” could have been recorded/captured/archived (even with their brutally unpleasant PowerPoint slides) and posted to the Web a week or two before the meeting. There are plenty of free and REALLY easy ways to do this. Then, those attending the meetings could have watched/listened to the presentations ahead of time, but on their own time and at their own pace. The meeting time, then, could have been more interactive; i.e. there would have been much more time for Q&A and discussions. This would have maximized the face-to-face time.
I think anybody who is in the position of having to “deliver content” (in many cases, that’s simply what has to happen) should strongly consider turning that content into a Web-based, digital video. From there, the time that would otherwise have been spent with the attendees “sitting and getting” could be devoted to face-to-face discussions. Classroom teachers could do this. In fact, some innovative teachers in Colorado already do it! School principals could use this approach for faculty meetings. Imagine, my dear teacher readers, more time at a faculty meeting for some actual conversations/discussions with your colleagues.
Again, we need to maximize face-to-face time.
photo credit: markhillary
So true. Somehow we all like to think that WE are the most important aspect of the content and that telling/reading it to a “captured” audience is the best way to deliver it. The same holds true in our own classrooms. No doubt, as you admit, information is important. But stand-and-deliver is not always to best use of face2face time where we could be taking advantage of the complex social mediation that needs to take place as part of learning.
Changing this is a challenge for us all, I think.
Cool!
I am a little concerned about time, though, Jon. I know where you are coming from and can’t count the number of hours of pointless presentations I have attended, but recording those ahead of time and then having participants watch them, in addition to coming to the actual lecture, seems to double the amount of time I have to devote to any one issue. Now, were you to cut a day off the session in your case for instance, then I would be all for it.
I know that in such a method of pre-recording and then interacting better face to face you are getting a better product, but you should get a better product, you are devoting twice as much time to it. If we are going to integrate technology, I want to save hours AND get a better product all at the same time. Just doubling the amount of time I have to devote to a project doesn’t really help me.
@Justin – could we then at least break even on this and rather than spend 2 days at a conference along with 2 days of expenses, spend only one there, while covering the content in preparation prior to meeting face2face. The result potentially would reap greater benefits at no extended time cost and perhaps for personal cost savings. Of course, this is assuming attendees would take the time to prepare for face2face meeting time. If not, we are probably no farther ahead than before. I’m thinking along the lines of what some high schools are doing with podcasting. Refer to my recent post on the notion. http://ransomtech.edublogs.org/2009/02/28/youre-not-all-that/
I spent a total of 14 hours at those meetings. If we had spent 1 day (8 hours) at the meeting actually talking, questioning, interacting, the value of the time would have been infinitely higher. I could have then had the other 6 hours as my own, to watch the video presentations and/or do other things. I could schedule the 4 hours or so of actual presentation time within those 6 hours or another time that works for me.
In the case of the Colorado teachers, the time the kids would normally spend doing homework is spent watching the teachers “lecture.” The time the kids normally spend in class being lectured at is spent working together on the activities that would otherwise have been done at home.
All that said, I would find a little extra time (not much, though) to commit to a learning experience if I knew there would be good, meaningful face-to-face time and some time to learn that could be scheduled flexibly.