Rich content

von anketroeder

2010-04-26_richcontent

I usually use my own images for slides. This may sound rather egocentric at first sight, and it probably is, but I find that using my own material has several advantages.

  1. There are no more copyright issues.
  2. It saves me a lot of time. There is no one ??perfect picture?? and yet it is easy to spend hours searching for it. With a limited choice, finding becomes much easier.
  3. There are no more same-party-dress situations. My dress may be plain, but it is also unique.
  4. It creates a more personal atmosphere. And teaching public speaking is something very personal.
  5. But most importantly, with my own material I always carry a special something with my, a personal emotional anchor. It acts like an extra memory: It helps me say exactly what I want to say and sound like I mean it. You need to picture what you want to say to sound convincing.

I sometimes use this cake slide to talk about what a large country presentation land is. From voice to color, from rhetorics to learning psychology, you choose.

I can only offer you so much in the course of one semester, I say. You decide what you want to learn, you decide what you pick. It can be overwhelming, to have so much to choose from. But you can take one step at a time. It is no picknick. But you are not alone in this.

In that respect, the slide is pretty straight forward. It is all about choice and the ingredients of a good talk. Rich content.

Behind the image is a different story, the one only I need to know. I may never choose to share it in class, but there it is, right by my side and it is my own personal time machine. Stepping back, even if just for a second, to that day in the park when I could not share in the banana & chocolate cake, because my diabetes 1 was too difficult to handle that day, helps me to remember what it is like when something as simple as a piece of cake is simply not a piece of cake. But it was a good day, and I mastered it, and I was not alone.

And so my slide helps me to remember what it must be like for my class, and I have stopped saying: This is really easy.

Because nothing is, unless you???ve tried it.