As a fairly experienced presenter, I also fully support the creation and use of slides. Slides can give your presentation structure. Slides can reinforce your talking points by giving a visual cue to what is spoken. Slides can provide a historical assist to anyone reviewing your presentation at a later date. But, It's important to avoid these common mistakes using slides. 1. By far and away, the worst thing you can do is read your presentation directly off the slides. Your head will be down (no eye contact), typically people cannot read in an interesting way (boring people to death) and above all if you can't say anything more interesting than what people can read in your slides, why should they even listen to you? 2. Turn your back on the audience to point at your slide on the screen. People will love your backside (not). BTW - It's a real low point if you combine mistakes 1 and 2 together... :) 3. If you're too dependent on your slides, you'll lose interactivity with your audience. Depending on topic and size, I usually invite interruptions and adjust -- Instead of forcing people to follow the slides. So, for example if you want to take a look at a couple of my slide decks at the following URL you can probably learn quite a bit without actually hearing me speak but whenever I do present on these topics I never lack an interested audience... They know that time listening to me in person is worthwhile even if they've already seen the slide deck. http://sites.google.com/site/4techsecrets/slide-presentations Everyone has a different personal style but I feel very comfortable doing it this way... HTH, Tony On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 7:36 AM, jdd <jdd@dodin.org> wrote:

Le 23/03/2011 14:13, Chuck Payne a écrit :

...

Are you teaching or doing a presentation? If you are teaching, DO NOT USE SLIDES!!! The biggest mistake anyone makes when trying to teach is to use slide. Trust me on this.

wrong... slides can be used creatively :-).

slides can be used to keep visible the course layout. I also have great success with using slides with qcm (like french driving licence). But you have to be creative, slides are easily boring :-))

jdd

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FYI - Your last 2 topic points (using YAST) can take up a whole session/evening. When I did the local 11.4 launch, my audience was a bit different than yours (mostly experienced Users) but based on the feedback I got framing my part of the evening's presentation entirely by waking through each YAST applet one after another (I skipped only about 8) really got the interest of the newbies who hadn't had any experience with any flavor of Linux before that evening. Walking through each applet covered almost an hour and a half and I didn't notice anyone in the room losing interest (except two guys in the back corner who were doing their own thing on their own machines all the time). YAST is what distinguishes openSUSE from every other distro, and it's a major reason for Users of every level to choose openSUSE. When a newbie sees what YAST does, it's what gives him courage he won't get lost using only the CLI. Tony On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 2:45 PM, Drew Adams <Druonysus@aol.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, March 23, 2011 06:13:01 AM you wrote:

...

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 6:43 AM, Drew Adams <Druonysus@aol.com> wrote:

...

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post to this mailing list! I want to share with everyone that I have set up a "Learning Linux Through openSUSE" workshop in Riverside, CA on April 9th at 5pm at the Blood-Orange Infoshop. If all goes well it should be a regular thing that I will be co-instructing with a friend of mine (who is also a fellow openSUSE user). This will be the first "formal" event like this that I have taught. Is there any advice or wisdom that can be shared with me so that it can be as successful as possible? I am very excited to be doing this and am looking forward to helping others get to know openSUSE.

Drew Adams -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

Drew,

Are you teaching or doing a presentation? If you are teaching, DO NOT USE SLIDES!!! The biggest mistake anyone makes when trying to teach is to use slide. Trust me on this.

Kostas is right that you need to have fun, but if you are going to teach, then come up with 10 points.  From those ten which 5 would be the best,  from those five come up with 5 to 10 minutes for those topic.

Here are the five things I have high lighted when I teach openSUSE for new uses.

1) Installing -- The easy ( a quick walk thru) 2) Desktop -- ( Use KDE since it more like windows for first time users, then hi-light apps that are on Mac ( iTunes, ) windows (Offices) then show what apps equal. 3) YaST -- How it so easy to manage your system 4) Installing Software -- from the command line to the GUI, show them how to add other repos, such as Packman. 5) How to customize their desktop -- Wiget, KDEAPPS.ORG, KDEART.ORG, Compis.

If you have time cover how openSUSE not just for Desktop, but for server as well.

Wrap it up with about support ( the best theme is you are never alone ), forums, mailing list, and wiki.

On keep thing were a lot people fail,  be interactive. Do just talk, same if you are doing slides.  Don't wait until the end to Q & A.

Basically what you are doing is create a synopsis for your class.

Now if it a talk, then course use slides. GIve a brief history of openSUSE, high light what going on the community, Tumweed, Evergreen, OBS, and SUSE Studios.  Then use the guide from above to create your slides on.  But again focus on how easy openSUSE for new users.

One of the biggest reason for people to go to Ubuntu, it how they present how easy it is to use for first time Linux Users.  One of things I am working on a guide lines on how to make window and mac users feel at home. Examples, how they can open their docs with LibreOffice  or use RhythmBox to access their iPod, How we have great suppor for smart phone Banshee/Dolphin/Nautilus.

If they are gamers, show them how wine can be used to play World of Warcraft. DOSBOX brings old games a live. Supertux gives them their Mairo fix.

Sorry, being an ex-teacher myself I tend to go on.

If need any help please let group know. Hopefully Drew that gives you an enough to start on.

Pup

Pup,

WOW, thank you so much for taking the time to respond it that level of detail. I am intending to teach and NOT to use slads (only because I feel switching from slides to demo is more clumbsy). I think the insight you provided will really come in handy in my preperation for the workshop.

My personal throughts on what to go over (not too different from yours)

1) what is Linux & what is a distribution - I am good at explaining this quickly now :)

2) Installing openSUSE ( I might show a video I know of that shows 11.4 being installed with the waiting being cut out)

3)Using the desktop - I am thinking having this focus on Manage files, using widgets, & desktop apps

4) Software installs/one-click-installs - using YaST to install software and showing how to use one-click-install

5)Managing the system with YaST - adding users, printers, setup network

what do you think? Also I am going to have a virtual machine prepared with everything ready to do for the examples. The place said that they have a projector (they use it to show film frequently) so I just have to make sure it is available for that night and use it to mirror my laptop screen.

Any more input VERY welcome. Thanks to everyone who has respnded. I will be sure to keep everyone posed on the progress of this event.

Drew Adams -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

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Although I don't read French, skimming a few parts of your site still look interesting, have you considered either creating an English translation or deploying on a platform that supports localization (that might automatically do some translation)? It might be another useful destination like Swerdna's famous site... Tony On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 11:33 PM, jdd <jdd@dodin.org> wrote:

if ever you happen to read french, you can find a complete course here

http://dodin.org/wiki/index.php?n=Doc.FormationJdd

(just 5 years old :-()

jdd

-- http://www.dodin.net http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgxog7_clip-l-ombre-et-la-lumiere-3-bad-pig... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGgv_ZFtV14 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org

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