How to overcome boring presentation?

I’m a teacher in a secondary school. My presentation tends to send students to sleep and they find me boring. Is there anyway to overcome a monotonous voice? Should I quit my job as a teacher because of this?

There is a tendancy when presenting the same subject matter over and over again (as with teaching) that it gets boring and monotonous to the teacher/presenter.

I think what has happened is that your enthusiasm for the subject has disappeared and it is coming through in your voice and actions.

You haven’t said what the presentation is about or if you’re referring to your teaching style in general so here’s some ideas I hope will help based around changing the environment, delivery, activity and interraction of your audience/students. They do take a little effort at first, but the rewards far outweigh the effort:

1) Take a look at Rex Hunt Fishing Adventures on Sky. He presents what to some people is a pretty boring subject (fishing) but in a unique and enthusiastic way. Perhaps you could learn a few tricks from him. E.g. he takes his audience to different locations (perhaps you could change the seating arrangement in the room to give it more dymanism – a circle where everyone can see everyone else instead of the standard ‘grid’ arrangement?).

2) Could you ‘scaffold’ your presentation to the audience/students? For example, if it’s mathematics based (i.e. finances), could you build a scenario around the purchasing and payment options of a mobile phone (or something else close their hearts)? Relating the subject to real life examples helps the audience/student to ‘visualise’ the scenario and so feel engaged.

3) Are there ways that you could involve your audience/students. Could you create a team or pop quiz? Or a treasure hunt to look for answers hidden around the room? This makes it a more ‘tactile’ learning experience thus working with more than just the 2 senses (sight and hearing).

4) Don’t just rely on asking ‘closed’ questions – "Does anyone have a question?" (no), "Do you understand?" (yes). Try to rephrase your questions in such a way that they can’t answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Then try the ‘pose, pause, pounce’ method. Pose the question, pause for someone to volunteer an answer and (after 10 seconds or so) then pounce (in a gentle way) on someone for an answer.

5) Try to get group discussions going by throwing a controversial statement relating to the subject to the group and ask them for their thoughts. Or if it’s a presentation, start the presentation with the controversial statement and build on that.

Seeing how your audeince/students react to each stimuli, and the responses they give you will help you to see the subject in a new light and will bring the enthusiasm back. It might even make you a ‘cool’ teacher!

I hope this helps.

AM.

Hi

Johan here.

Where ever you go in life you will sell an idea. And you need to do it with a little adventure and you can only do that if you take risks. But you’ll never make everybody happy.


There are many other ideas I could use. For example a screen cast program like camtasia. This may not be applicable to you. With camtasia you can create a lib of all your teachings and you may even take your teaching online.

There are many people who use these to teach online.

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www.squidoo.com/beyond-bullet-point-expert Unbore your audiences