The Presenter’s Guide to Engaging, Fantastic

Sessions

Introduction

Let us help you raise the bar and become a better presenter.

• Increase your chance of presenting again by following these guidelines and tailoring your presentation to our attendees

WE INVITE OUR HIGHEST-RATED SESSIONS BACK

Charter schools are so creative–why aren’t conferences?

flipped classroom

project-based

learning

college preparatory

imaginative learning

montessori style

core knowledge

character education

service learning

un-conference

Let’s make the conference feel as cool

fishbowls

ted talks

experiential learning

quiz bowl

attendee-led

pecha-kucha

rants

flipped

fishbowls

Don’t recognize one of these? Look it up!

Sales-Free Sessions

New this year!

• Every attendee will be asked on the survey “Was a sales pitch included in this presentation?”

• If over 25% respond “Yes”, you will not be invited back.

• Our attendees complain every year about sales pitches.

Presentation GoalsOur goals for you

Our Experienced Attendees

50%

15%

12%

19%

4%8%

22%

33%

37%

New School 1-23-5 6-910+

First time 1-3 4-67+

Years Attending the Conference Age of School, Years

WHAT MAKES YOUan expert?

GO DEEP INTO THE

complexities

Stay within your strengths, talk about what you know really well.

Don’t just skim the surface of your topic. Dive deep into the nitty-gritty and get to the tough questions fast.

How to dive deep:

Use your handouts, not your powerpoint, to provide the background information. They can read that as they come in if they don’t know it already.

Jump in to the meatiest part--start with the challenge.

Goal of this Presentation

Set a clear goal for your presentation: What should attendees know going out that they didn’t going in? Use your goal to drive your content.

Attendees want to be ENGAGED

• Engaged with:

• you

• each other

National Charter Schools Conference 2012

Ideas for EngagementThis takes planning. You won’t magically wake up and feel engaging

on the day of your presentation.

• Icebreakers:

• Introduce yourself to your neighbor

• Tell your table why you’re here

• Ask: have you ever dealt with this problem before?

• Stop every ten minutes to ask your attendees a question:

• Show of hands, have you ever met a student like this?

• Questions break up the act of listening and turns attendee’s minds to something else for a second--that helps make them better listeners too.

EYEcontact

There are people out there. When you look up from your notes, you engage them!

Boston Collegiate

Don’t Read the Powerpoint

• Many presenters like to read their slides out loud and put lots of text on them.

• This is not engaging for three reasons:

• Your attendees read along

• You look at screens, not at them

• If they can just read it at home, why did they fly to DC?

Keep Powerpoints as free of text as possible.

Matters

Leave at least 15 minutes for questions. Be prepared with some conversation starters in case you

have a shy audience.

KIPP Indy

The Usual Presenter Setup

podium w. mic

head table

gotta put your things somewhere!

screen covered in long sentences of

text for attendees to read along with you

The Great Presenter Setup

in front of the head table with

a hand mic

hide your things!

screen with crucial info

Let the attendee focus

on you

You can use an app to advance slides

Content strategies

Plan Your Content• Brevity: Keep on-screen words brief.

• Outline: Outline your presentation before designing

• Test: Ask a colleague to listen to you rehearse

• Practice: makes perfect!

• Handouts: Use a handout instead of a slide deck (See presenter website for our handout)

Supplementary Materials

• More engagement suggestions

• Design tips

• Gadgets and Gizmos

• Session format suggestions

• ...and more!

Available on the presenter website.

Contact us:presenterinfo@publiccharters.org

See You in DC!