The TED curator, Chris Anderson, gives a great example of how visuals are meant to only supplement your "naked presentation". He doesn't depend on slides. He's telling a story. His visuals were built using Prezi. He tells an impactful story about the power of the internet in sharing innovation from all corners of the world.
This got me thinking about how I really should minimize my Powerpoint slides. This is a great illustration of "less is more".
It's a great talk - god I love TED.
ReplyDeleteChris
Love TED as well. We should start lobbying to have an EM person speak at TED.
ReplyDeleteShould have a poll: vote for the first TED EM speaker...
ReplyDeleteC
I vote for you, Chris!
ReplyDeleteSorry...I vote for Michelle!
ReplyDeleteDitto what Fred said...
ReplyDeleteThanks for your vote Michelle, but I don't think a 'face for radio' and a 'voice for Morse code' would go down well on TED!
Chris
Where DO you come up with these sayings?! I veto your votes.
ReplyDeleteI just used Prezi for a small meeting at my job, not an academic talk, just a concept piece and the Prezi wow-factor is amazing. I think it's strength is that you can really show the big picture and zoom in as needed as you explain your thoughts as opposed to clicking slide after slide. Additionally it's super easy to work with. There's no spellcheck and you need flash. Also, if you don't pay the yearly fee you have to make all your presentations public. You can download the desktop version for a free 30 day trial. I think there's also an education version that is also free.
ReplyDeleteGive it a try!
Demian
Hi Demian: I agree with your assessment of Prezi. It's a little tricky because I saw few presentatoins which OVERused the zooming around. Got a little dizzy!
ReplyDeleteThat technology is cool, no doubt. The following, however, is related but slightly off topic:
ReplyDeleteThe goals and the level of talk of a TED-esque presentation are very different from a medical didactic lecture. The reason why everyone (myself included) loves TED is because it's "big picture", "30,000 foot", general principles about stuff. The titles of the talks currently at ted.com are things like "Curating humanity's heritage", "The future of business is the 'mesh'", "On being a woman". The adjectives you can sort talks by include "courageous", "beautiful", "jaw dropping". The point, the goal, the interest of lectures in medical school and residency, however, is to deliver concrete, specific, individual take home points, and not just convey gist, gestalt, and fill the time with soap box grand standing. Looking back on all of the classes and lectures I've sat through, I think that it would take an incredible amount of work and creativity (perhaps an insurmountable nigh impossible amount) to teach me high school algebra using TED-esque techniques, let alone most of the facts in medicine. To that end, how much can we extrapolate from TED, and technology like prezi, to medical lectures? Any interesting case presentation or talk about differential diagnosis wouldn't lend itself to a TED style presentation. I don't think anyone in the history of medical didactics has given a lecture, or could possibly give a lecture on EGDT that'd be called beautifully jaw dropping and courageous. Perhaps a grand rounds lecture on the future of emergency medicine, but not on a topic like HIEGT in CCB overdose, for example.
Thoughts?
Also should say that I think that most powerpoint presentations are done poorly, and surely lots should be done to make them cleaner, more "naked", but that's a separate issue. My comments are not meant to defend weak public speakers who torture helpless audiences with poorly thought out presentations and hellish powerpoint slides.
ReplyDeleteHey WongML: You have totally hit the nail on the head. I too struggle with comparing content-heavy didactics with these TED talks. The take home lesson is that, if possible, one should always strive to simplify talks and not make them more busy. I'm in the middle of reading Garr Reynolds "Presentation Zen". I think we can do lots to clean up our Powerpoint slides though. To start let us all start taking out SLIDE TRANSITIONS! My little pet peeve.
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