By David Barker
Author and Publisher of Materials for Japanese Learners of English
Back to Basics Blog for Teachers

Have you ever sat through a really terrible presentation? I’m guessing that you have, and probably more than once! If you Google the phrase “Death by Powerpoint,” you will find that there is a whole mass of articles and videos about this on the Internet. Last week, I did a presentation at the JALT national conference in Hamamatsu, Japan that was aimed at raising awareness of the need to prepare properly for conference presentations. The title of the presentation was “How Not to Give a Presentation,” and I tried to cram as many common presentation mistakes as I could think of into 12 minutes. I have uploaded the video onto my own blog, and I wrote a very long article to go with it listing the things that bug me most.

The presentation was very well received, with the audience taking it in the spirit in which it was intended and joining in the fun. Many of them came up to me later that evening and said, “I watched your presentation at 12, and then I watched it again at 1, at 2, and then at 3!” It seems that we still have a long way to go in raising the standards of presentations at teaching conferences. Anyway, if you are interested, please take a look a the video. (Please note that it makes much more sense if you read the article first.) http://www.btbpress.com/category/btb-blog-for-teachers/