Create Killer Presentations Your Audiences Will Love

July 16, 2018 / Oskar Cymerman

The 3 types of presentations we've all been a part of:

The kill me now type: Presentations done for the sake of filling time with an activity that seems productive but is a waste of time for everyone involved, including the presenter. We've all been there and want to forget. Luckily, they don't happen all that often and when they do, we've learned to use the weak bladder excuse to periodically stop the brain pain (the flight response).
The I think I heard something about it but forgot type: Content-rich presentations delivered in such a way that we forget most of what was taught even though we might have stayed engaged throughout. This is the type we experience most often. The presenter has good intentions but lacks the understanding of how to deliver a killer talk or multimedia presentation.
The killer type: Engaging presentations full of valuable content presented in such a way that we can remember and apply it to our work or personal life. They don't kill us. They kill IT. They cause us to have strong, positive, and hopefully appropriate feelings toward the presenter. We feel thankful, inspired, and challenged to action.

The infographic below is about the elusive presentation type - one that showcases the speaker's knowledge as much as skill. One, that proves he or she can communicate ideas in a way anyone can understand and apply them. One, that leaves us in awe of the presenter and wanting more because somehow, some way the presenter understands how the human brain learns and leverages it when creating the presentation. One, that we'll talk about to others. One, that leads to professional success because everyone wants that person on their team.

When employers talk about communication skills they specifically want an employee who communicates effectively, is engaging. and energizes others to act.

Below, is a start. My future posts will explain how to practice and deliver killer presentations. I hope I communicate my ideas effectively...

My new book Crush School Student Guide: Learn Faster, Study Smarter, Remember More, and Make School Easier contains 4 lessons designed to help students create, practice, and deliver effective presentations and avoid the dreaded "Death by PowerPoint." Each lesson contains exercises and examples. But I don't just tell students how to do it - I walk them through the process and provide a plan and a template to follow so they can create their presentation right in the book.

It's kind of like having a coach who helps you practice a skill after it's shown to you. In fact, all 60 chapters/lessons are designed for students to use the skills after they're described. The infographic below is merely an "information-delivery" medium. Applying it is the key to learning. Check it out!

Creating Killer Presentations Audiences Love

When writing Crush School Student Guide: Learn Faster, Study Smarter, Remember More, and Make School Easier, I wanted to create a resource a student can use for school and beyond. My goal was not only to write a book that helps teens learn more effectively while stressing less about school - I also set out to create a guide that helps them learn transferable skills they will need in college and later work.

The infographic above is one of a series of three I use to teach students how to create, prepare for, and deliver more effective presentations.

If you're like me, you've sat through hours of mind-numbing PowerPoints or Google Slide presentations you remember little from. This is because the presenters did not know how to do it better. They were asked to give presentations in school but not taught how. They just did what their teachers did. I bet their information was valuable but it was delivered ineffectively.

Skills, such as effective presentation and communication of ideas are the biggest reasons why some individuals achieve great success and others stay stuck on the first few rungs of the professional ladder. As these skills are often an afterthought in high school and college, students who choose to learn them on their own rise above the average and advance in their future professions.

Just take a look at the list below and think about how many of the skills below were deliberately taught in your high school and how much class time was spent analyzing how to improve them.

Creating, Preparing for, and Delivering Effective and Engaging (Killer) Presentations
Improving Critical Thinking
Better Decision-making
Becoming More Open-minded
Creativity and Innovation
Teamwork Basics and Creating Effective Teams
Setting Goals and Creating Plans
Understanding and Developing Habits
Training Memory
Speed Reading
Problem Solving
Project Completion

My guess is... not much. Chances are you were expected to use them but not explicitly taught how to or given a plan to improve. This realization of how inadequate schools are at skills instruction is what guides my writing.

The Crush School Student Guide is an all-in-one book, guide, and exercise manual that contains a series of short, fun, and easy to follow lessons designed to teach students skills needed for school and work success; skills required but not explicitly taught in today's schools.

Imagine your kids having a book that gives them:

Over 60 strategies they can use to learn faster, study smarter, and remember (a lot) more of what they learn.
A self-paced fun way to learn how to learn and acquire success skills they'll be able to use in school and beyond.
A reference guide that shows them how to use brain-friendly strategies to do better at school (understand difficult concepts, complete school projects, and study for tests).

It is now available on Amazon for pre-order. Just click here.

You have the power to change lives. Use it often so they can change the world.

Oskar

Hi! I'm Oskar.

I teach, write, speak, rant to make learning better.

BOOKS & TOOLS

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categories / Teaching
tags / teaching teens, parenting teens, brain, sharpness, clarity, brain rules, neuroscience, presentation, communication

Learn Faster, Study Smarter, and Remember More

July 14, 2018 / Oskar Cymerman

"Learning is a marathon not a race," they say but is this statement true? On one hand, cramming is a "rushed" method that doesn't work. On the other, learning things quickly and applying them effectively is highly sought after by employers.

We live in a world full of paradoxes. And, education isn't immune to them. Because schools emphasize tests and grades not learning, and by learning I mean deep understanding, effective application, and long-term memory of concepts, the best students cram, get good grades, and forget. They did it quickly, but what is it? Can you call it learning if it's quickly forgotten? If you can't use it in the future, are you learning or merely wasting time?

While grades are important and get students into good colleges, they don't guarantee college or future job success. In fact, the latest college completion data shows only 54.8% of students graduate with a 4-year degree in 6 years or fewer. But if they're able to get into colleges, then why do over 45% of students fail and end up with exorbitant tuition bills with nothing to show for them?

We all know the answer to this. While some students cannot afford to continue, many simply don't have the skills to perform well at the university level and it's not their fault!

They wanted to go to college!

They wanted to succeed!

They didn't...

But they could have if they had the skills. If only they knew and could use effective learning strategies.

Check out the one below. Look how common sense it is!

Yet, most students don't use it. They don't know it.

Learn Faster, Study Smarter, and Remember More with The 4R Approach

While steps 1 and 2 (Receive and Record) happen in the classroom, students are frequently left to their own devices when it comes to memory consolidation, which steps 3 and 4 (Reflect and Recreate) lead to. A student who has the understanding, the time, and the discipline to these things at home is likely to learn (understand, remember, and be able to apply) the information.

Problem is, even at the high school level many students do not realize they should review and use the information immediately after they receive it. They don't know because classes are built and teachers trained to deliver information not to help students learn it.

Of course every teacher wants all their students to learn! But, school curricula are written to deliver massive amounts of content, leaving little room for teaching skills and learning how to learn.

However, any student who understands how her brain learns can make strategic decisions about her learning. If she has skills and knows effective learning strategies, she can use them to learn faster and smarter. She can improve her working and long-term memory. But chances are, she must acquire many of these skills on her own. Or, she might get lucky...

But if you're like me, you don't want to leave your kids' success up to luck or school alone. I want my son to do well in school and life but as schools are now, they mostly focus on teaching subjects not transferable skills.

The good news is the neuroscience developments of the last decade have allowed scientists to identify how the brain learns best, and all you have to do is apply these realizations and methods that support them to learning. But again, schools teach only a few of these skills.

There are many books on the market on learning how to learn, accelerated learning, memory training, and doing better at school.

Many contain useful information but I have not found one that isn't descriptive.

Most, just tell you what to do to get better.

The better books give you examples.

None of them have students practice what they preach in the book.

They don't contain exercises that have students apply the information, which is ironically how we learn best and that is why most of the information the students read is forgotten and never used.

A perfect example of this is to think about a book you read, say... 1 month ago. How much do you remember from it? How much can you use right now?

If you don't open it back up, chances are you remember a few things well and only vaguely remember a few others. The rest of the information, which is most of it, never made it into your long-term memory. This is because your brain did not evolve to remember it in such a way...

And this is why I created my new book Crush School Student Guide: Learn Faster, Study Smarter, Remember More, and Make School Easier, to be a workbook that contains a series of short, fun, and easy to follow lessons designed to incrementally turn a mediocre or good student into an advanced learner ready to crush the challenges of high school, college, and the world of work.

It is now available on Amazon for pre-order. Just click here.

Before you make your mind up, consider this:

The book contains well over 60 strategies and tips anyone can use to learn faster and smarter and train their memory.
In the book, I don't just tell students to "read and apply." Rather, I built the book to be a Learning How to Learn Course.
Any student can use the Crush School Student Guide at home or the book can be used by teachers as a series of lessons done in class.

But don't worry, if you're not ready to spend $29.95 on the paperback, you can check out the Kindle version at low risk for $3.45 only. It's easy as 1,2,3 by clicking here.

You have the power to change lives. Use it often so they can change the world.

Oskar

Hi! I'm Oskar.

I teach, write, speak, rant to make learning better.

BOOKS & TOOLS

Buy on Amazon

BLOG ARCHIVE:

Buy on Amazon

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categories / Learning
tags / focus, productivity, teaching teens, parenting teens, brain, sharpness, clarity, brain rules, neuroscience

To Focus on What Truly Matters You Must Fight Predators and Choose the Right Opportunities

July 10, 2018 / Oskar Cymerman

The modern Homo Sapiens is in the fight of his life. The never-ending struggle occurs in his brain. As the modern brain battles the ancient part of it, the struggle manifests itself as a series of contradictory behaviors. On one hand, the Sapiens has the ability to learn an indefinable amount of information. On the other, he's often too distracted to learn much of anything.

Evolution has both allowed him and robbed him of the ability to carefully process information - to rethink, to reflect, and to reapply. As a result of this paradox, he often skims the learning surface. While the cerebrum (modern "rational" brain) has skyrocketed his potential, his progress is hindered by the amygdala (ancient "emotional" brain). His knowledge stalls. He's mired in mediocrity. No longer in tangible danger, he's escaping the conditioned anxieties. The distractions today's world affords him make it easy. And they are everywhere.

Why do so many people become part-time zombies, the classroom students and the everywhere adults, who upon leaving their dull desks and constraining cubicles glue their eyes to screens and allow their minds to be trapped in virtual, dopamine-inducing worlds that serve as fire escapes from the boring, painful, and otherwise unpleasant daily reality but keep them stuck in it long term?

The ancient brain has evolved to respond to two things: threats and rewards. The mere perception of a threat releases cortisol and adrenaline and we freeze, fight, or flight. When the brain detects reward possibilities or we're rewarded, it produces dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. This motivates us to keep doing what we're doing because we want to keep feeling the good feeling.

Back in the day, the rewards were food and the opportunity to procreate. The threats were the predators that tried to eat us and the natural we tried to hide from.

Enter the modern times - the technology and the entertainment. Our ancient brain responds to them as opportunities and they often are but the rewards they offer can be tricky.

While technology is cool, the entertainment industry is insidious, and our awareness rare. Fires are few and far in-between and most other prehistoric dangers the Sapiens faced have long been extinguished. Yet our split attention remains and make no mistake, the industry knows it and fights for it. And we succumb by continually allowing ourselves to be convinced we must keep running away.

The insidious, profit-mongering, and brilliant marketing campaigns and products of television producers, social media providers, app and game developers, and others work to keep us convinced they offer something much better than life itself. Consequently, we often let time pass unforgivably "taking the load off" from our busy work or school lives instead of spending it doing more meaningful things that improve our lives. Mediocrity perpetuated with the belief "this is all life is supposed to be."

And this is how the industry players want us. They want us coming back to them. The more automatic our behaviors the better, because if they lose our attention they lose. They can't profit.

While many online activities are worthwhile, we rarely think about how much time we spend participating in things that keep us stuck in the status quo we might otherwise work on changing. While there's nothing wrong with taking a mental break, as we should do things that relax our minds, we are being conditioned to identify work as the necessary evil to grind through from 9-5, so that we can have fun as a reward afterward.

We become dabblers. We just dabble in things. We're too distracted to commit. The predators changed and so did the opportunities but they're ever-present. They keep our minds occupied. If we don't pay attention we end up doing a lot of things that entertain us in the moment but add little lasting value to our lives.

We can spend our lives sitting on a couch looking at a screen doing little more than nothing or we can spend that time interacting with the world we live in, learning about it and ourselves, and filling our lives with meaning. The only way to flip that switch is by becoming aware and taking action.

Our kids are the most vulnerable ones. But zero tolerance electronics policies are not the way because the brain wants what it cannot have even more. The forbidden fruit tastes sweeter.

So we don't take away but educate. We lead by example. We show our kids that there's a better way. We limit our use and their use of the devices and actively participate in their lives. We do stuff with them because we love them. Then, we cross our fingers and hope they see the way for themselves.

On the places they'll go.

I think they will. I believe they can.

You have the power to change lives. Use if often so they can change the world.

Oskar

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Hi, I'm Oskar. I teach and write about learning for success.

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categories / Life Reflections
tags / teaching teens, deeper learning, learning, teaching, deep work, productivity