Posts tagged as:

presentation myth

The three benefits of gesturing – it’s not what you think

June 20, 2008

Why is it, that when you’re speaking in front of a group you suddenly become aware of these great clumsy appendages at the end of your arms – your hands? Why do you suddenly wonder what to do about them? Gesturing is natural In normal one-to-one conversation you never think “What shall I do with [...]

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Claim your Space

May 27, 2008

Lisa Braithwaite from Speak Schmeak has commented on my post about the attention-getting myth. I started responding to her comment, but my response got so long I decided it was worth a blogpost in its own right. The issue is how to best help nervous speakers at the start of a presentation . Lisa suggested [...]

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The myth of learning styles

May 26, 2008

Many presenters have heard about learning styles and want to know how they can take individual learning styles into account when they present. But the learning styles model has no research that backs it up: “from a neuroscientific point of view [the learning styles approach to teaching] is nonsense”. (Susan Greenfield, specialist in brain physiology, [...]

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Why you don’t need to grab attention

May 18, 2008

As a relatively new blogger I’m spending a lot of time reading other people’s blogs. I came across this intriguing story from the Washington Post which was blogged by both Seth Godin and Laura Fitton when it was first published last year. A world-class violinist, Joshua Bell, was asked by the Washington Post to busk [...]

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Attention-getting – The Evidence

May 11, 2008

In my last post I wrote about the attention-getting myth. I argued that the idea that you have to grab attention at the beginning of a presentation is a myth. Here’s the evidence to back that up. Studies have been done measuring the attention levels of students in university lectures. Here’s the results of a study [...]