Presenting to young audiences. Instant and fair feedback.

Young people are genuine. Who would dispute the idea? But once you come to realize that you are losing the young audience. You are talking to the group of teens and here are the early warning signs: they are looking for distractors and every time you need their feedback they mumble, fidget, giggle and you feel helpless.  Let’s face it, it’s crazy hard to re-energize this audience. You are wondering how to get through revising your techniques for these unique students. Have I brought your memories back? Then you may find these insights helpful as you try to come to grips with today’s toughest audience.

You can always get to well-known, easy to use tools. It only depends on you whether they will work or not. No doubt, PowerPoint is versatile and made to be readily available in classroom where kids utilize marketable technology skills. Interactive book reports, poetry reading, students portfolios, flash cards…PowerPoint gives every chance to be creative. But the odds are pretty slim if you happen to be unable to pump up the energy level. So be energetic and enthusiastic yourself! Coupled with your enthusiasm PowerPoint captures the kids’ attention and enables them to develop ingenious presentations for their projects.

There is nothing better than a PowerPoint presentation that is done professionally with only limited effects. Main points can be emphasized by using graphics, animation and sound. Overused bells or whistles can be a problem as well as too many animations and transitions. Many teachers think, “It’s energizing and it will make my students get focused over the point.” The problem is that they start losing the track of what you are saying within a couple of seconds. They missed the content being too focused on the effects. The result is break down of communication. That leads to a false belief that the use of PowerPoint presentations has the potential to distract students’ attention and causes confusion.

The scientists found that PowerPoint presentations improve short term memory of those students who prefer an imaginary representation. It doesn’t mean that the students who received the instruction via PowerPoint perform better on quizzes or exams. The effect of PowerPoint might depend on a topic under discussion and the students preferred representation style. The study also finds that students have more favorable attitudes towards both the presenter and the presentation if PowerPoint is used to deliver instructions. PowerPoint helps collaboration in group projects by involving every student in the learning and teaching processes. It motivates students to be responsible for their own learning, and offers them opportunities to demonstrate their work.

When young people don’t like what’s being said, they will never act as if they do. It’s not because they are not naturally rude: they just openly express feelings where adults often pretend to be honest. This fair feedback is an undeniable feature in young audiences, a quality that some adults try to avoid. The greatest advantage of using PowerPoint in the classroom is that a teacher can always make some changes to lessons and use them over and over saving time on handing out instructional material, writing on blackboard, repeated speech etc. But any attempt to breathe life into a PowerPoint presentation is doomed to failure unless your heartfelt feelings are involved. Young audience doesn’t care of lots of factual details. What they need to know is that hiding behind the projector person is real. You touch young people deeply by speaking from your heart breaking well-trodden rules of speech. PowerPoint slides need to reinforce the key points, and the teacher explains the rest. And…bear in mind always to come into the class with a back-up plan! You never know when technological glitches can happen. Your computer can crash, networks can go down and it is the right time to look for what you thought out, what you found out, what you did and how you now feel.

Remember that you are on stage. So make it come alive!