SeeHearSpeak Podcast

00:11 Tiffany Hogan: Welcome to See Hear Speak Podcast Episode 13. In this Episode I talk with Tony Sindelar, Instructional Designer. In our discussion Tony describes how PowerPoint can be used for good or for evil. To use them for good, Tony shares many valuable tips for creating effective PowerPoint presentations that will help you convey key points, and not detract from them. Tony peppers our discussion with fun examples from his experiences teaching professors how to create power point presentations that facilitate learning.
This conversation is part of a series on leading literacy change that I have created for a course I teach online at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston.
Thank you for listening! And don’t forget to check out www.seehearspeakpodcast.com to sign up for email alerts for new episodes and content, read a transcript of this podcast, access articles and resources that we discussed, and find more information about our guests. Also don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in apple podcast or wherever you are listening.

01:25 Tiffany Hogan: Welcome to SeeHearSpeak Podcast. Today I have Tony Sindelar, and he is going to discuss with us designing effective PowerPoint presentations. I also have Norma Craffey, and I will have them start by introducing themselves.

01:40 Tony Sindelar: Hi. I'm Tony Sindelar. I am an instructional designer here at the MGH Institute of Health Professions. If you've never heard of an instructional designer before, that's okay, I'm pretty used to that. I am someone who helps faculty and teachers out with their teaching. I'm like a coach for teachers, so people come to me with challenges or areas they're looking to improve their teaching, and I try and give them guidance to help them out. And sometimes that includes how to make sure that you're using PowerPoint in a way that will help you and not hurt you. So, that's me.

02:12 Norma Craffey: Hi, everyone. I'm Norma Craffey. I am a first-year doc student here at the IHP, a reading specialist and former public-school teacher in the elementary setting. Excited to talk with you.

02:23 Tiffany Hogan: Oftentimes, as a leader of literacy change, you are asked to create a presentation to share information, either to share ideas that you have about change that you want to implement in the school system, or to maybe even share ideas about a presentation or share information about a presentation you attended somewhere else. Creating effective PowerPoints is critical to get your information out and to be a change agent. And we were thinking about different good and bad PowerPoint presentations, and that's how Tony started his lecture on effective PowerPoint presentations when you would come to my course. So, I thought we could start the podcast out that way of just thinking, and I encourage listeners too to just get in your head what are your... We can start out with the bad, 'cause then maybe we'll end on a good note. But let's start with the bad. I'm sure you can think of many examples, but what are some examples of bad PowerPoint presentations? What do you think?

03:31 Norma Craffey: I can probably think of 100.

[laughter]

03:34 Tony Sindelar: What was the worst?

[laughter]

03:35 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah, the worst.

03:36 Tony Sindelar: Think about the worst, the most unpleasant.

03:37 Norma Craffey: I can't... Not that I can say a specific one, but I do have very... Multiple memories of the end of the year being in public school and having to sit through your two or three days of professional development when it's a million degrees, and you are being trained on a new curriculum and perhaps you have a publisher coming in to do your training. And I do have to say that publisher-based trainings, I've been to many different publisher-based trainings for many different reading initiatives or computer programs, and I don't feel that they were very engaging. It was more just talk at you, like how to read the manual, and I think that, in general, that that's very frustrating for teachers but also at the end of the year when everyone is so exhausted and you have to pack your classroom up and you have to do this and that. And as a reading specialist, you have to make sure all your data is processed and retrieve all your books, and there's so much to do. I think that that time could probably be used very effectively, but the manner or the vehicle that they were trying to present the information through was just not engaging enough to work. And I think that's interesting, especially in education when engaging your learners is something you're evaluated on, but then to have to sit through presentations where no effort is being made to use those strategies that you're expected to use with kids.

05:04 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. It's a lethal level of irony. Right?

[laughter]

05:06 Tiffany Hogan: It is. It really is. I could think about just people talking to you, as you said, and talking at you, I think you said, but it's also that dreaded reading from the PowerPoint.

05:17 Tony Sindelar: Yes. Everyone brings that up when I ask them about that. It's the reading the slides. Your audience, it's like they're not literate enough that they could read the slides. [laughter] It's like, "I'm going to read the slides at them" is the worst, most disengaging thing. I think about the workshops at the end of the year, I almost feel like those are the presentations that people are giving, not because they wanna help you out, not 'cause they wanna engage you or change what you're doing, but so that we can check a box that says we did it. Right?

05:42 Norma Craffey: Yes.

05:43 Tony Sindelar: So instead of there being any interactivity, instead of there you working with a peer, instead of you doing things or asking questions or thinking about what is this going to look like in your teaching, we are presenting information that you could have read so that we can say, "We've done it."

05:57 Norma Craffey: "We've done it." Yeah.

05:59 Tiffany Hogan: Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. [laughter] The other thing that drives me nuts is when the pacing is off. Maybe there's a slide up that has few words like, okay, that's what you should do, but then there's just so much talking that seems unrelated to that slide that it's like the slide is actually distracting. Right?

06:16 Tony Sindelar: Yeah.

06:18 Tiffany Hogan: Or there's a random picture and you're like, "I don't know how this relates to what you're saying. I don't know, this is like a cute kid, but then you're just talking all around it." It's not a match, in a way.

06:27 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. And it's interesting to think about the cognition of PowerPoint, which I think is something probably people don't think a lot about. It's just a thing we use everywhere. And it's this combination of you can put visuals on the screen, and you can have text and image, but then there's also the person speaking in front of it. And I feel like a lot of people don't really think about the triangulation of those things. How does what's on the screen be a text or image? How do the text and image work together? But how does that work together with what you're saying? And I think about, we have all these just deeply, deeply ingrained bad habits about PowerPoint. I think about presentations where, like, "Did you need a speaker there? And if not, why did that happen?" I think about the conference presentations and trainings I go to where the first thing they do, I feel like this has fallen a little out of style, but people would give you a packet that's just all the slides, and you flip through it and it's like, "Do I know what they're now going to talk about for the next three hours?" Kind of.

07:25 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah. You're like, "What is this going to do to augment learning and to get the message across?" Yeah. It's like it should facilitate, not detract from the message. It does seem like it often detracts from the message as opposed to facilitate.

07:40 Tony Sindelar: And that's even, I feel like, when you... To think about PowerPoint in the classroom, that challenging thing about what are students' expectations about PowerPoint. At the higher education level, if students miss class, they will ask a classmate or the instructor, "Can I get the slides?" And it's like, that's not the same as being there. And it's like 25 years ago, you might have asked a classmate for, "Can I get your notes from the day?" Now there's not... Maybe there aren't notes or the notes are like in the PowerPoint, but PowerPoints are not the same as notes from the person who've been there and notes from the person who've been there is not the same as being there, but people kind of think it's good enough. [chuckle] Which is wild, right?

08:20 Tiffany Hogan: It is. I also think it can actually... Talk about detracting, 'cause we're saying the bad aspects of PowerPoint, but I like when you present it in class, I use the example of Winston Churchill, where it shows on the... For the listeners, there's a slide behind Winston Churchill giving his famous speech and he says, "We shall fight... " And then he has a bullet point on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields, in the streets, in the hills. And then it has "No, never surrender."

[laughter]

08:49 Tony Sindelar: And, of course, it...

08:50 Tiffany Hogan: It just reduces the...

08:51 Tony Sindelar: Yeah, which you, as a literate audience, will read before he says it, possibly while he's saying it so you're distracted. But so either you don't hear his delivery or the delivery lacks all dramatic impact. Also, the slide is in Comic Sans but...

[laughter]

09:07 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah. Oh, Comic Sans.

09:09 Tony Sindelar: Which, you know, I know some...

[laughter]

09:13 Tony Sindelar: I know that I have to be... Designers love to make fun of Comic Sans, it's a... Comic Sans doesn't spite back. It is probably... There are good things about Comic Sans, I have heard. There are reasons why it's designed the way it is. And there are some good uses of it, but it is a frequently overused font that can be a little distracting and I think especially depending on who your context is, can feel a little unprofessional. So I don't...

09:38 Norma Craffey: What's your recommended? Is it Times New Roman or...

09:41 Tony Sindelar: So, my recommended font, if you never wanna think about fonts and PowerPoint, and we can talk a lot... Probably not today, but I could talk a lot about fonts and designing what type, but if you never want to think about what type or what your fonts are on your slides, and you never want them to be distracted, you want to use a sans serif font. That means a font without feet. Times New Roman has feet, that's great for the printed page. If you're creating a document that you're gonna give to people or they're gonna print out, that's really... Or even just look at on their screens where it's paragraphs of text. If you're putting together some kind of packet for an audience or for students or whatever, Times New Roman is a lovely font to use for that. And it's a very standard... Times New Roman is an elegant font that people just see as the generic font. So, if you're writing a paper, you've probably written it in Times New Roman. For the screen, for slides, you want something that has sans serif. It doesn't have those little feet. Those little feet help you read sentences and paragraphs of text, but you don't need them for the screen where you have short phrases and bulleted lists and whatnot. So your classic sans serif fonts are Arial and Helvetica. If you use Arial and Helvetica, no one will ever complain. [chuckle] They can be a little boring, but they're also super readable and they're simple and they work.

10:55 Tiffany Hogan: I like that.

10:56 Norma Craffey: Yeah, learn something new.

10:58 Tiffany Hogan: Fallback for sure. I like you gave a reference or it's an article written in Wired called "PowerPoint is Evil." It goes right to some of the bad examples, but I like the few quotes I pulled from it. One is, "PowerPoint's pushy style seeks to set up a speaker's dominance over the audience." Of course, that's anti-interaction, which we really know is very facilitative for learning. The other one was, "The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch," which just goes back to the Winston Churchill. [chuckle] Definitely format over content, which is the opposite of what we want. And then the other one was, "But rather than supplementing your presentation, it has become a substitute. So, PowerPoint is substituting presentation and such misuses ignore... " Now I'm gonna pull this down here a little bit so I can see it. "Ignore the most important rule of speaking which is respect your audience." And I would also say, "Know your purpose," which is part of the audience aspect. I thought that short write-up was really good in terms of what we often think of are the bad parts of PowerPoint.

12:14 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. I really recommend people check out that short reading, "PowerPoint is Evil." It's by Edward Tufte, who's a... He does a variety of things, including visual design, and he's got this great series of books, and he does all-day workshops on presentations. And he hates PowerPoint. He thinks PowerPoint... I think the title is a little tongue in cheek, "PowerPoint is Evil," but he does not like it, he is not a fan. And I am sympathetic to some of his views in terms of I think there are some things that PowerPoint does by default and that we have these cultural habits about how we use PowerPoint that are not great. [chuckle] The question would be, "Can you use PowerPoint in a way that breaks away from those?" Maybe. Edward Tufte would say that, "No, there's all these things about it that are certainly not good." But I think one of the big ones that he's really critical about is, again, this like, "Use this as the tool to talk at people, instead of talking with them."

13:08 Tony Sindelar: And the other thing he's really critical about is basically the density of information you can put in a PowerPoint slide. Everybody uses PowerPoint slides as a way to communicate information, and you have that classic here is text in a bulleted list, even if it doesn't make any sense for it to be in a bulleted list. And he does the thing where it's like, the density of information in PowerPoint is closer to the density of information in "See Spot Run," children's books. And that's not good that... The thing I sometimes tell people when they're designing PowerPoint, "PowerPoint is more like a billboard on the side of a highway." That's the level of information you can put in it. And if that's a jumping off point for what you're talking about, I think that can be okay, but if that's all you're doing, if all you're doing is reading the billboard at people, you're not doing much. And you're probably... You may be doing more harm than good.

13:59 Tony Sindelar: One of the things I bring up and... I don't know. I don't know how much headway I've made with people, but we have moved away from the old version of you might give people some kind of document about what you're talking about. So, a list of resources, a summary of things, and you think about how much information you can put into a 200-board single-page handout versus 10 slides, and it's very different, and the richness and complexity that you can put there. And Edward Tufte is very critical of basically how little information fits into a PowerPoint and how important information can get lost.

14:36 Tony Sindelar: And he even talks about, in the design of visual information, how there are important decisions that have been made that have gotten obfuscated by not necessarily PowerPoint, but bad visual design, bad design of documents in terms of where is the thesis statement of a 10-page scientific report, and if it's buried in the middle of page eight, people didn't see it. He goes on this famous thing about the Challenger explosion, and how some scientists knew that that was a possibility and failed to communicate it to the people that had the ability to stop it, including even... He goes into, like, "Eight rocket scientists wrote this report and forgot to put their names on it." So, it's like, here's a bunch of rocket scientists, I forget if it's exactly eight, but several people with PhDs and they didn't put their names on it, so the people who read it didn't really know who this was coming from.

15:25 Tony Sindelar: But, yeah, information design, information density, these things matter. And I sometimes encourage people, when they're thinking about a presentation, don't open up PowerPoint and start there. Maybe start with writing out ideas on a piece of paper or on an index card or in a Word doc, somewhere where the format of the slide is not going to make your decisions for you. I think you could go into PowerPoint and do all your work there, if you are intentional about that, about thinking about that. But it really helps to think about what's the goal of your presentation. Whether it's a five-minute thing or a three-hour workshop, what do you want people to take away from that? And make sure that that is... All of your slides connect to that. And the challenge of PowerPoint is you go in and it's like, what's the first thing you wanna say? What's the second thing you wanna say? And it doesn't say, "What's your whole goal here? Is everything you say gonna connect to that?" 'Cause that's what matters.

16:15 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah. That's a great transition to think about PowerPoint presentations I've seen that are really good. And one of them I saw recently was the Boston Speaker Series in the Symphony Hall. Great location, great speakers, and I heard Lisa Genova there, who's an author. And what I noticed is she started speaking and I thought actually she wasn't gonna have a PowerPoint, because she started out talking in a narrative, telling her story, giving some key points. And then what I noticed is she did have a clicker in her hand, and what I noticed is that she would only click the PowerPoint when it was something that augmented her main point. So, I think a lot about PowerPoint being something that augments what you want to say, not directing you. You're directing PowerPoint, it's not leading you. And she used it so effectively. And then what she also did, which I thought was really effective, something I would like to try out, is she also turned the slides off. She would show something that augmented, and then she would click another one that would basically turn it off. And then talk some more, talk some more, focus on the message, then click again, something that augmented.

17:29 Tony Sindelar: So, she either had a blank slide or there's literally... I try not to do too many technology tips, but if you're giving a PowerPoint presentation, one thing to watch out for, standing just by your computer the whole time, that's not very dynamic or engaging. But literally here is one... The one tip I'll give you. When you hit the B button, it makes your screen go black.

17:46 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah, that's what she was doing.

17:47 Tony Sindelar: There you go, yeah.

17:48 Tiffany Hogan: That's exactly what she was doing. She didn't... 'Cause she clearly had an amazing speaking style, she was very effective, and you could tell that she was only putting the slides up when she wanted the audience to pay attention to the slide and her. But then you can't leave that slide up while you continue on...

18:07 Tony Sindelar: 'Cause it's distracting.

18:08 Tiffany Hogan: 'Cause it's distracting. And she wanted everyone to focus on the message. And so instead of the format leading ahead of the content, it was clear the content was leading the format. To me, those are the... That's the essential part of a good presentation.

18:21 Tony Sindelar: Yeah.

18:22 Tiffany Hogan: What are some other things if you think of a good presentation you've heard recently, Norma, that you really liked?

18:27 Norma Craffey: The best presentation and speaker that I have seen is Dr. Ablon over at the Think: Kids at Mass General Hospital. He came to the Cape, where I was working in the public-school systems, and we had an initiative Cape-wide for social-emotional learning and several schools were implementing the Think: Kids framework within their schools. And he was just a fabulous speaker. He did have slides, but he was so engaging and personable. He was in an auditorium with several hundred people, and it was packed and it was hot and it was all day, and he really just had everyone right there with him. I've heard that he's recognized internationally for being a great public speaker as well, but I do remember that I don't think I paid much attention to the slides, I was just focused on what he was saying. And I am one of those people that will read the slide before you even talk about it, and I get bored very easily. And it really... I am someone who really needs to be engaged within a presentation or I tune out. So, he was definitely one of the best presenters that I've seen.

19:42 Tiffany Hogan: And that was actually the first guideline you gave, Tony, when you spoke to the class. The guideline number one for creating effective presentation was, "Engage your audience and don't bore them." Can you tell us about that guideline?

19:53 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. I think that's... It's even challenging. There are people... PowerPoint's been around for a long time now, so most people are pretty familiar with it. But I remember in my early days, working with faculty, there'd be people who'd start using PowerPoint for the first time. And there were people I saw who went from... They were probably a pretty engaging speaker in the classroom just using chalkboards or overheads or whatnot, and they would start using PowerPoint and they would get less engaging, and that was like... Now we have lots and lots of people who just use PowerPoint for everything. They don't remember a world before it. But that felt especially tragic that it was like, "Here is this technology that is making you worse. Or the way you're using it is making you less engaging." And it's that tricky thing of we want good... Good presentations are engaging, bad presentations are not engaging and making sure that the technology doesn't get in the way. And some of that is how you use it. Right?

20:45 Tony Sindelar: I think your example there of the person who was... They were really using the slides and the images to augment what they're saying. I feel like the place where people set themselves up for failure with that, reading the slides is obviously awful, just don't do that. If you're doing that, don't do that. Don't do that, don't apologize for doing it, just don't do it. [laughter] And it's hard, people still do it. I feel like maybe I'm stressing that a lot, but stop doing it. I feel like I go to a conference and there will always be... And it's not your slides, it's what you're doing. But I haven't been to a conference yet where somebody hasn't done that. It's like, how is that still happening in the year 2019? How are we still here? How do we not know that that's bad? But even the next version of that, maybe you're not reading your slides verbatim, but your slides aren't your notes and that's... I think a lot of people are still at that place. The slides are like, "This is a reminder to me, the speaker, what I'm talking about." And your slides are not your notes. You don't wanna do that.

21:43 Tiffany Hogan: I'm guilty as charged of doing that. I'll be like, "Oh, I'll just follow my slides."

21:48 Tony Sindelar And this was... I'll tell the story of one of the worst presentations I'll ever see. I will not name this person. This was an invited speaker at the school where I was an undergraduate. It was literally a Nobel Prize winner, and they came in and it was in a special auditorium, and there were probably 600 people there, and this person went up to the front and they had... This was before PowerPoint, there was an overhead projector and they had their paper printed out on transparency and they put the transparency... And we're talking like a 200-word document on the overhead projector, and they had a pencil, and they would use the pencil and they read the paper for an hour to an audience of 500 people. And it was like, this was the... Their delivery of it was nuts.

22:29 Norma Craffey: This was dynamic.

[laughter]

22:30 Tiffany Hogan: I was gonna say audiobooks are dynamic.

22:32 Tony Sindelar: And this was like sold out crowd, people had waited in line to get in there, and then 20 minutes into the thing, half the audience was gone. People had physically got up and left. Obviously don't do that. Your slides aren't your notes. Your slides are the augment to what you're talking about. They're not a reminder to you of what you're talking about. They're also not a reminder to your audience of what you're talking about. If you need to be reminding your audience what you're talking about in the moment, you've already gone wrong somewhere else. But, yeah, they're not just a summary of what you're talking about. They're an augment, they're a jumping off point, they're a place to illustrate things.

23:10 Tiffany Hogan: That leads us to why... You've mentioned this several times, but explicitly why are bullet lists bad?

23:15 Tony Sindelar: I think bullet lists are particularly bad because they're the default way that we organize text on the screen in PowerPoint, and not everything deserves to be a list. If you open up PowerPoint and say, "I need a new slide with text," it thinks you want a bulleted list. And I think it becomes even this weird thing where we fill space on the slide, where it's like, "We can get about six or seven bullets on here, so we're gonna put six or seven things on here." And to me, a slide should be an idea that you're gonna talk about. And if you've got several ideas that are related, you can talk about them together, or maybe they're big ideas and they should each be their own slide. But, yeah, the bulleted lists feels like this artificial thing that some software engineer or somebody who was doing sales calls decided in the mid '80s, and now we use it for everything regardless of... People give different types of presentations to different audiences with different expectations. Why are we all using bulleted lists?

24:11 Tiffany Hogan: Right. It's like all of a sudden that's how we... It really has become something that drives our thinking even. When we think about our PowerPoint, it's like, "Oh, what are the main bullet points?" Do you think it was because the idea was to not have too much text, but then it went overboard just having...

24:27 Tony Sindelar: I think it... I don't know, I'm not a historian on this, but I've heard some people say it feels like a very sales pitch-y thing. Like, "Here's the three things you need to know about this widget, please buy this widget." But that doesn't... That is kind of a disservice to... I feel like there's a disconnect between that and the classroom or interacting with our peers that we need a richness of deep knowledge. I feel like it strips out narrative which you brought up, I think, but narrative in that personal component in good presentations... I think PowerPoint doesn't inherently say you can't use narratives, but it doesn't encourage it. Edward Tufte has this "PowerPoint is Evil" because it doesn't encourage these good practices and maybe even discourages them. There's the follow-up reading I got there which is "In Defense of PowerPoint" by Donald Norman where... I think his thesis is basically "PowerPoint's a tool, whether you use it for good or bad is up to you." So, it's like, "Are tools good or evil?" It depends how you use it.

25:30 Tiffany Hogan: Well, this leads to guideline two, because I remember when I first heard you do this presentation, I kinda had that panic moment of, "Oh, bullet points. Well, then what do we do?" And your second guideline was, "Make your point, but don't distract from it, ideas of how to get away from bullet lists or only use them when they're actually making a point that fits a bullet list."

25:49 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. And I think a big part of that, make your point. First off, not a fan of bullet lists. Not a fan of decorative graphics. And this is hard. I feel like for a while people were doing a lot with images and there was the era of sappy clip art. Now we've moved into the era of nice, visually attractive, but not actually related images. There was definitely a year where I would go to conferences, and every conference presentation started with here's an image of a path through the woods, because it represents our journey through this project, but it's not about the woods.

26:20 Norma Craffey: I did a lot of those presentations actually.

[chuckle]

26:22 Tony Sindelar: Yeah.

26:23 Tiffany Hogan: It's true.

26:24 Tony Sindelar: To me, visuals are a very powerful way to communicate ideas, but you have to use them appropriately. And you don't wanna use them in ways that are confusing, because they're actively distracting from what you're trying to... What the point you're trying to make is, what the ideas that you're trying to communicate. Animation falls into the same category. I've been through this conversation with a lot of people that are like, "Okay, okay, Tony, bullet lists are bad. What if I have a bullet list, but the items fly in one by one? What if I spent 30 minutes making it so my slides laser in and then the text is on fire?" And it's like, you are not fixing bulleted lists.

27:01 Norma Craffey: So glad you weren't at my talk yesterday.

[laughter]

27:03 Tony Sindelar: I'm sorry. This is not... I'm not calling anyone out. Some people are like, "Oh, my gosh, you weren't in the room yesterday, were you?" And I was like, "No." But simple goes a long way. Especially, guess what, we're all busy people, you do not wanna be spending a bunch of your time building fancy, complicated animations in PowerPoint. Please, please stop doing that. And it's hard. Simple goes a long way. A slide with a couple of pieces of text on it, or maybe even just one in a really big, readable font goes a long way. That's my other big pet peeve. I still have not been to a conference where somebody hasn't put up a slide that's like a wall of text. And in order to fit it all on the slide, it's so small that you can't read it and they apologize, and it's like, "Don't apologize. Don't do it." [laughter] And people have gotten better, but we're still not there.

27:55 Tony Sindelar: I don't know. Sometimes people want an exact guideline but... And it's hard where you're building a presentation on a screen that's pretty close to your face. Put that into full screen mode, and stand on the other side of the room and see if you can read it. And if you want general guidelines, smaller than 20-point font is real small for a slide. And it's worse if you know you're gonna be presenting in a big room where people are way far back or... I don't know, sometimes I'm presenting in rooms that don't have the best lighting conditions. Make your text big, make it readable, make it high contrast between the color of the text and the color of the background. Don't have text with lots of different backgrounds. Sorry, I'm getting into the graphical design side of things, but simple goes a long way. And it's hard 'cause I think we have some of these habits that get in the way of simple, and we're trying to fix things and make them kind of like... We're adding sparkles to it without thinking about, "What are we actually trying to do here? What is the goal?" What do you want your audience to take away from your presentation? Not, "How do I keep them excited with animation?"

28:56 Tiffany Hogan: Well, in defense of your animations from yesterday, [laughter] I do wanna say that I actually... I thought that what you did was very effective. What Norma did was she was presenting a model and then she put in an animation of a red line, circling something important.

29:10 Tony Sindelar: Yeah, so you're emphasizing something.

29:12 Tiffany Hogan: That was, I think, really good because you're like, "This is where I want you to focus right now, and this goes with what I'm saying." I think that was a... In defense of your...

29:18 Norma Craffey: I think it was to remind me what I was gonna say 'cause I was so nervous.

[laughter]

29:22 Tony Sindelar: Highlighting it is a... That's pretty reasonable.

29:25 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah. That's reasonable versus just reading it.

29:28 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. And sometimes I talk in absolutes for emphasis, and it's like, guess what, with a lot of things, it depends.

29:34 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah. But even getting... Honestly, Tony, I've heard you speak on this a couple of times. And every time, I go away with something new that I can do, because I think it is a process. It's almost like we're having to detox from what we've learned about traditional PowerPoint to make it better. We all know it's not as effective as we'd like it to be, but we feel tied to it still. So every little tweak...

29:54 Tony Sindelar: It's deeply entrenched.

[chuckle]

29:55 Tiffany Hogan: Right, it's deeply entrenched. So every little tweak away from a bad model is a tweak towards a good model, so every little bit helps. And I think that one of the biggest points that I remember when I hear your presentation is this idea of planning a whole presentation. So, to get it around some of these bad presentation ideas, what do you say about how do you... Really, what are the key components of planning a whole presentation for it to be effective?

30:23 Tony Sindelar: Instructional designers, we're all about goals. When we talk about instructional design for courses, there's this thing called backwards design and it's like, what is the goal? Where do you want your students, your audience, whoever it is that you're designing for, where do you want them to be by the end of the course? But you can apply that down all the way to the class session or even to a lesson or to a thing you're doing in class and teachers who know about lesson plans. But just reminding yourself, "What is the goal?" If you're thinking about a new presentation, or revising a presentation that you're gonna give off, what is the goal of that presentation? And I sometimes give people a Post-it note or an index hard, something really tiny. You don't get to tell me the goal in half a page. What's the thing that you want people to take away from this presentation?

31:10 Tony Sindelar: And I even try and get people to even think a little bit more... 'Cause sometimes people are like, "Well, I want people to know about X." That's what a lot of presentations are, it's like I'm delivering information. I even try and get people to think a little bit beyond that, "What do you want them to do with that information? How do you want people to be changed based on the time they spent hearing you talk? Whether that's 10 minutes or three hours or three days, what's the change that you're trying to make, what's the impact here?" And if you can define that before you go and start making slides, that's a big deal. And so that goal should really drive a lot of what you're doing, 'cause that goal matters. And again, if you're thinking of your slides as your visuals, as the things that are gonna augment what I'm doing, they're the little artifacts that make my case, you're gonna think about those in a very different way than, "Well, what's the first thing I'm gonna say? I'll put that on the slide. What's the second thing I'm gonna say? I'm gonna put that on slide two." What's your goal?

32:03 Tony Sindelar: So, the big thing I try and get people to think about, what's your goal, in a tiny box. Some people are like, they think about it as the elevator pitch. Why are you doing this? What do you want your audience to get out of it? What do you want them to take away from it? How do you want them to be different based on what they're gonna... The time they will spend with you? And I feel like, some people that's a little intimidating. And some people are like, "Oh, I know what that is. I just had never articulated that before and maybe hadn't made the best decisions because of that." People listening, you might think about that. A workshop that you had to give or a presentation you gave recently or have coming up, what's the goal? Can you fit that in a tiny box, one sentence? I don't know.

32:45 Tiffany Hogan: I will say now, this is something I think about often and now I try to apply it to everything I do. So, thinking about this course, and this series of podcasts for leading literacy change, I had to think really clearly about the goal and everything centered around it. So my goal is to provide information and skills that will increase the effectiveness of someone taking the course actually creating change in their environment. So, that's a big goal. But then I could start to specify... But I do think it does lead to you have these big goals, but then when you're thinking about a PowerPoint presentation, you talk about the next step being the constraints. How do you match your big goal with the constraints in a way that's still going to engage your audience?

33:33 Tony Sindelar: Instructional designers, we do this a lot. We try and get you to think big pie in the sky, how are you gonna change the world? [chuckle] Okay, now you've done that. And maybe you've even... Committing things to writing is a big deal. But you've got your big, number one, your big goal. Now we want you to think about what your constraints, and the constraints are the real world. And the real world is like, "Well, I've only got an hour, or 10 minutes, or 30 minutes." And there's 50 people in the room or 20 people in the room. Or those people in the room, it's gonna be a hot room at the end of the semester and they need to pack up their classrooms.

34:04 Tony Sindelar: Your constraints are, who are the people, what's the amount of time you have with them, what are they worrying about, where do they need to be getting? What are the physical resources you're gonna have in the room? Can you do stuff? Can you have them work in groups? Can you put stuff up on a flip chart? Time is the big one. Everyone starts with time. "I've got my big pie in the sky idea, but, oh yeah, I actually only have 15 minutes or two hours, or whatever for whatever topic, is a big deal." And again, something... I used the word "topic" there. You didn't hear me use the word "topic" when I talked about goal, 'cause goal is not just, "I need to talk about this topic." Goal is how will your audience be different. So, constraints is a big one. And to me, good design, it comes out of the intersection of what's your big goal, and then what are your constraints.

34:50 Tony Sindelar: And then the next step might be... And again, maybe you're not even doing this in PowerPoint, figuring out an outline, a sequence of key points for your presentation. And again, it's almost like you think about how we teach writing to students and we ask them to build outlines and to think about stuff before they sit down and start writing the paper. How often do we do that with PowerPoint presentations? Not a lot. A lot of people's first step with designing a PowerPoint presentation is open PowerPoint. [chuckle] Write "slide one," write "slide two." And think about how much different you might be if you thought about, "Okay, here's my goal." Goal is big and broad and hard to articulate. Now give me the three things that you want to happen in this workshop or this presentation you're gonna give. Whether it's 10 minutes or 10 hours, what are some of the things that are gonna happen in that?

35:36 Tony Sindelar: It's an outlining process. You can go through revisions. You can decide, "Oh, there's actually six. And now I wanna think about which ones need to be first." But doing that before you go and start building slides is important, because building slides is time-consuming. And the other classic thing I see, whether it's faculty or students, people spend a lot of work, a lot of time on the first couple. And then they run out of time and the second half is rushed. And you can see it in presentations. And having an outline could help you know that, "Oh, there's six things I need to work on. I wanna try and spend my time somewhat equally and not spend 80% of my time on item one and 20% on items two through six."

36:14 Tiffany Hogan: It's really not a linear process.

36:16 Tony Sindelar: No.

36:16 Tiffany Hogan: That's the thing. When you open up PowerPoint, it feels linear, like you said. Then you start to get this in the beginning versus the end. Versus if you have these key points, you're equal.

36:25 Tony Sindelar: And even, again, that this is a place where you might think about the role of narrative. What's the beginning and middle and end of that story? And PowerPoint does not think about that as a technology. PowerPoint is very linear. What's the first slide? What's the second slide? What's the third slide? And you can make those slides in whatever order and rearrange them. But when you open up PowerPoint, it's like, okay, you're building slide one before you build slide two. And our audience experiences it pretty much in a linear way. But you, as the person thinking about it and planning it, don't have to be thinking linearly.

36:55 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah. I think that... I've been thinking a lot about this idea as a narrative. As someone who studies comprehension, we think about how humans take in information. I would argue, in terms of evolution and people have written on this, the narrative is so critical for understanding. It's how we've built our society. And so even in doing a scientific talk, there's always a narrative. Why are you interested in this? What led you to this interesting point? Why do you think this might work? Why not? And so infusing that narrative across everything you do is so powerful. And I can imagine, if you're a reading specialist, speech pathologist, you're asked to give a presentation, there's always a back story. Let's say your goal is that you went to a very cool professional development, and now your goal is to come back and share that information with your school. Instead of just sharing the information that you got verbatim, thinking about telling the story, why did you go to the training? Why is it important for the school? Why does it matter to the children in the school and the outcomes? And then that sets a framework and also leads to what are these key points. And it touches... You start to think about the constraints and the people that are in the audience. So, narrative is so critical, something we often miss out on.

38:12 Norma Craffey: And it also adds to not only the goal, but you're taking action steps. What do you want them to do when you take away? When you tell, as a reading specialist or an SLP, and you're coming back and sharing some information, most of the time it's around improving student outcomes. And there's always a narrative, everyone sitting in that room, is always there to improve outcomes for kids, but oftentimes we get jaded in the mumble jumble of the year. And sharing your personal experience and how it changes you makes you vulnerable in a way that makes you real and authentic and everybody... It just really empowers people to do something. And if you can get one or two people from that group to make a change in their practice, then you're not just impacting the 30 kids on your case load. Now, it's 90 kids. And so I think that that's such a good point, is that goal but then having that goal be so clear that there's an action step after.

39:06 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. I think that narrative is just so huge. Part of it is it makes it human and it makes it personable in ways where... Again, does PowerPoint make things not human and not personable? I don't know whether it's... Is it PowerPoint, or the way we use PowerPoint, but we frequently use it in ways that de-personalize the presentation. And it feels kind of like, for that person who's gonna do the same sales pitch 50 times a week, so they can get through it and get to the next thing, that's not a great experience for the audience. And so narrative injects a lot of that personal and human. It also puts a structure that's gonna be coherent on what you're talking about. And I feel like also, maybe not all narrative does this, but a lot of it gets the, "So what? Where is this going?" And that's part of those PowerPoint presentations that aren't so great is here is a disjointed sequence of pieces of information. And there's not a structure and there's not a, "Why do we care?" A narrative usually has that baked into the, like, "Here's the so what."

40:04 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah. One thing I've been doing and thinking about creating PowerPoints, and you laid this out in your presentation, talking about putting one piece of paper in and making the little boxes that would be your individual slides, and then really thinking about the key points. And I've also been thinking about, tying to this narrative, how would I tell an individual person about something? Because I tend to do a better job when I'm talking one-on-one. I go to the conference, I wanna share information, I see my colleague, I say, "Oh, I went to this great conference. Here's the reason I went, and here's what I learned. And it was really cool 'cause I think it's gonna help our kids this way." Then somehow that power of narrative and the organization and impact I had in that one-on-one conversation is completely lost when you're standing in front of an audience. So, I try to think now about when I give a PowerPoint presentation, how I'm basically presenting it to one person, which happens to be maybe if I encountered one people in that audience, but I almost... I just wanna create it in a way that I'm actually augmenting what I told one person.

41:08 Norma Craffey: It's such a smart thing.

41:08 Tony Sindelar: I think that's a really powerful way to think about teaching in general. And I think that's something that people in the health professions, if they can figure out a way to activate that, is a big deal because people have experience like working one-on-one with somebody they're providing services for or working one-on-one with a student that they're supervising in a clinical setting, and then it's... But it's hard when you go to the classroom, 'cause now, even if it's like one-on-20, it feels like a different world. And it is different, but if there's things you can borrow from those other experiences to connect to that, I think you will be more successful and happier, and everyone will benefit. But it's hard.

41:46 Tony Sindelar: We know the transfer is a challenging thing, but if there's stuff you can borrow from that... And it's hard... I feel like I've been to a lot of presentations where it's like, "Here's how teaching is just like being an actor." Or, "Here's how teaching is like being an improv comedian." Or, "Here's how college teaching is just like being a fourth grade gym teacher." And it's like, guess what, teaching is lots of things to different people. And we don't all need to be actors, or improv comedians, or gym teachers, but there are things you can borrow hopefully from whatever life experiences you've had, but the key thing is borrowing those may not be obvious. And even whether it's you've been a parent or work with people you're providing healthcare services to or overseeing people in the clinic, the more you can think about how that is more similar to being in a classroom, I think that helps. But it is hard 'cause it feels so very, very different. And I'm not saying it's not different, I'm just saying maybe it's a little less different than you think it is.

42:39 Tiffany Hogan: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And speaking of that, I mentioned that you had this piece of paper that showed the individual slides. And then you have what you will say, and then you have what they will do. Can you tell me about those three components, and how they go together in planning an effective presentation?

42:56 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. I talked a little bit already about, again, slides aren't your notes, so what you're showing on the screen is not what you're talking. That's two parts of it. But then there's also what is the audience doing? And again, I feel like PowerPoint has got us into a place where the PowerPoint slide is the be all, end all. And I try to think about, what do you send people away with or what do you give them in the workshop or session to work with that is different than the PowerPoint? And sometimes, if you're doing it in small groups, it may be a physical piece of paper. If it's in other groups, it might be some other document you're providing electronically. But what do you give people to do in the audience or to walk away with that's different than what's your slides? And sometimes, guess what, think about, "Are you doing places in your presentation where there is interactivity or where you're asking people to do some kind of activity?" And that's gonna look like different things in different contexts. A workshop for teachers is gonna look differently than presenting at an academic conference 'cause it's mainly more about the cultural expectations of those different environments than anything, but your slides aren't everything.

44:02 Tony Sindelar: There may be places where you want people to turn and ask a question to the person next to them, or stop and brainstorm a question for you as the speaker, or to do these classic Classroom Assessment Techniques or workshop activities, and those aren't necessarily things in your slides. Also, at the very least, you may wanna give people like, "Here is a link where you will go to read more about my work. Here is the website, here's my email address." Here's how you get to go more because is everything that we're ever gonna do packaged in this one hour presentation, or was this maybe your first start, first step on advancing whatever it is you wanna be doing with that? So, yeah, I think of it as triangulating the presentation, what you show, what you say, and what they, the audience does.

44:46 Tiffany Hogan: What the audience does has been pretty powerful, too, when I think about giving these presentations. I have never done that. I remember what you would do is you'd hand out a piece of paper, let's say it's double-sided.

44:56 Tony Sindelar: Yep, put a lot of information on an 8-1/2 x 11.

45:00 Tiffany Hogan: Totally. But you also... What I liked is you had an engaging and sense of you'd say, "Write down the two key aspects about this one point." Let's say you have six main points, you might have something on the page for each of those main points that the audience has to do or a link that's resources. So, if you have the six main points, then they would go along, so it'd be another form of augmenting, but it could be interactive. And then they take it home.

45:30 Tony Sindelar: Yep. I do, and I'm not telling you that everybody needs to do this. This is the thing I do in my own workshops or presentations that people maybe have seen. But I feel like I'm a weirdo 'cause I don't see other people doing it very often, but I do a lot where I provide people a handout that is a combination of, "Here's some information for you, but here is a space to take notes," and it is structured. So, if I've got those six topics, I give you six headings. And I don't give you information about what goes on the heading, but it is a structure for you're gonna see the six things and you can jot down whatever notes you want. I have not seen too many other people doing this, so I still feel like I'm like, "I've been doing this for years, and no one else is doing it. Am I doing the right thing?" I don't know, but it works for me.

46:09 Tiffany Hogan: I hope our listeners do it because, as I've done it in classes or presentations, it has been very effective because then people can see right up front what the key points are, and then they can walk away and have notes on those key points. So it's a nice scaffolding that engages your listeners, too.

46:26 Norma Craffey: Yeah. And if we think about how we work with kids with language-based learning disabilities of either oral or written language, that's something that we, as reading specialists or collaborating with classroom teachers, would do a lot, and especially for kids as they hit middle school because of that content increase. And then so if you shift that and think about giving a presentation that it's new content, it almost puts it in the same place where you're learning a completely new topic and having that outline to guide you can help organize and facilitate your learning. I think that that's great that borrowing some of those best practices we have in K-12 education and also we're working in the PowerPoint as well.

47:08 Norma Craffey: I wanted to add, for the do, as a reading specialist or SLP, when you're presenting, maybe you're working on having a common idea of what early intervention looks like in your school or what resources or skills you're going to use, great presentations that I've been, on working with kids on phonemic and phonological awareness was, by Literacy How it was that one of the Connecticut IDAs and Dr. Margie Gillis, she... Everyone in the audience had their boards to do, Say It, Make It, and a bunch of other activities. She had adults getting up there with their letters on them and to show how you would teach the segmenting and the blending in a whole class, and it was in a way that you could take... And Sally Grimes does that as well, too. When you leave, you have a bag of things that you can take. And I think that not only that's good to have the activities, but it's also good to have a common understanding of what your definition is of how to teach phonemic awareness, or what it looks like when you're doing phonics instruction, what is best practice. And having that ability to be able to model that, I think that that's a great thing to work into those professional developments as well.

48:22 Tony Sindelar: I think it's especially important for... It's one thing if it's like, "I'm going to give you this presentation on this thing that you need to start doing tomorrow. And you're gonna start doing it tomorrow and I'm gonna help you be successful at that." That's one thing. But if it's like, "I'm gonna give this presentation with a bunch of techniques that you might use in different places throughout the year," or whenever. Having those artifacts that you can go back to as the person in the audience is a big deal, because it gives you a context that having just been through a workshop, especially it's like, "We're doing a workshop at the end of the year, this is where you'll go in summer. Here's all this important stuff that maybe you'll think about... "

48:58 Norma Craffey: You have to start doing in September.

[chuckle]

49:01 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. Maybe you're gonna think about it over the summer, but probably you're not gonna think about for real until late August. And it's like, what if we had given you some stuff so that you at least could activate that knowledge in your head of, "Oh, those were the seven strategies." And, "Here's even the thing where I did strategy number three."

49:16 Norma Craffey: Right.

49:18 Tiffany Hogan: I also was thinking in terms of design. You mentioned your design ideas. Another take home I get from listening to your presentation is to think about how you view your PowerPoint. And I've shared this with colleagues and students and it does seem to surprise them. It's not something that I think people readily use, is under... When you open PowerPoint, one of the headers is "view." If you go to view, you can click "slide sorter," and it shows all of your slides on one screen. And you can get a bird's eye view of how much text you have, how many visuals you have. And I like how you highlight that this needs to be a nice mix of text and images. And also I've used that slide sorter, too, to see am I covering my main points. And you talk about using it even up front to create that outline that says, "Okay, here's the title. Here's the conclusion. Here's the main points I'm gonna use, and I'll have maybe two or three slides." You have an idea that maybe one of your points is gonna require more information for your audience. So, maybe that one point has, you're gonna devote seven slides to that. And that's just a ballpark. And maybe another point doesn't have as much information, so maybe only two slides, so you can get a sense of it from looking at the slide sorter. I thought that was super helpful.

50:38 Tony Sindelar: Yeah. I think it again goes to that, a lot of people... You experience PowerPoint linearly, are you building it linearly? You don't have to. [chuckle] And I think a lot of people don't use that slide sorter view. And I think it's intended for reordering slides, but it's a really powerful, like, "What does my whole presentation feel like?" And I even sometimes have people compare, open up two or three of your presentations that feel different and look at them in slide sorter view. And do you get that sense of it from that?" But you can tell from that slide sorter really quickly like, "My slides are really text heavy." And it's hard. Sometimes your slides do need to be text heavy and there are topics that don't lend themselves as well to visuals as others. But that gives you a sense of how it all feels. Because it is hard for you, as the person creating a presentation, to ever have a complete feeling of what will it be like in the audience. You'll never really get that fresh experience. But that slide sorter view is a place you can go to think about, "What does this look like?"

51:34 Tony Sindelar: And I even think about, "Can you read them in your slides from the slide sorter view?" Maybe some a little bit, but it gives you a sense of how big is some of your text, 'cause you'll see the stuff that jumps out in it. So, that's just another good thing to do. Whether you're building something new or revising something you've had for a while, take a look at what does it feel like in that slide sorter view and how does it fit together. 'Cause mixing text and image is a big deal, versus here's 20 slides in a row with seven bullet... With bullet lists of seven items, or pick slide after slide with big paragraphs that I'm gonna read at you because also marketing my PowerPoint presentation as a way to put people to sleep.

[laughter]

52:12 Tiffany Hogan: Right. Yeah, exactly. I haven't done this before. I'm curious what you think about it, Tony. But I had a colleague who told me recently that he likes the design ideas. Have you seen that?

52:22 Tony Sindelar: I don't know if I have played with it. We've been talking about PowerPoint the whole time and I actually... I use PowerPoint as a shorthand for PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides. And I do most of my work in Google Slides. But is the design idea like visual layouts of slides?

52:35 Tiffany Hogan: Yes, it is. And, Norma, you used it.

52:36 Norma Craffey: Yeah, it is. I used it on my... I've been using it on the past few presentations that I did, and I didn't use it heavily on the one that I did yesterday. I'm a visual person. I think that that's where I get hung up on PowerPoints, is that I want things to be, not just look pretty, but graphically be spatial and...

52:58 Tony Sindelar: Engaging.

52:59 Norma Craffey: Yeah, engaging.

52:59 Tony Sindelar: No, that's not... Totally matters, that's real. PowerPoint presentations are a visual media, right?

53:04 Norma Craffey: So, I do like it. I feel it does offer a way to organize slides in that I wouldn't use the other thing, the Smart Clip Art, I think it's called.

53:15 Tiffany Hogan: Oh, yeah. That infographic.

53:15 Norma Craffey: I've been using... Yeah.

53:16 Tony Sindelar: Yes, you can make...

53:17 Norma Craffey: I've been using that a lot, instead of, like you said, bullet points, things that I wanna highlight, having them in some type of a design form. I'm not really sure what the appropriate term is.

53:29 Tony Sindelar: They're visuals, yeah.

53:30 Norma Craffey: But I think it looks nice and it draws the audience attention to your, as you were saying, your main points. I do have a long way to learn on how to get better at that but... Yeah.

53:39 Tony Sindelar: It's not easy. And I work with faculty a lot and faculty are very text-based people. They spend a lot of time reading and writing papers all day, or read articles all day. That's their format that they tend to be very most comfortable in, which is not necessarily something that translates to presentation design well. And I think it's something probably all of us can try to be better at is, "Where can I create engaging visuals in my presentations?" And that's hard for some people because some people are like, "The topic I'm doing does not translate to that." And maybe that's something where it's like you gotta work with someone one-on-one to figure it out. But I would think, in your presentations, think about where are there places where you're showing a process or a workflow or the organization of something or a model, because those are places where some kind of visual diagram, which you can create with that kind of SmartArt stuff in PowerPoint or equivalent software, makes a big difference over that here's another bulleted list. Right?

54:35 Norma Craffey: Yeah.

54:35 Tony Sindelar: Places where you can use visuals to show the connections and relationships between ideas in a way that a list will just never ever give you.

54:43 Norma Craffey: Yeah.

54:44 Tiffany Hogan: A SmartArt is good. SmartArt is under "insert." You go to SmartArt, it gives you lots of different ways. I think of it as infographics, but it gives you a way to design ideas, like you said, processes or models. The design ideas is different. That one is under view, I believe. Or actually it comes up when you do a new PowerPoint slide and then you can click on it. And it is actually under... Let's see here.

55:10 Norma Craffey: I think it might be under...

55:10 Tiffany Hogan: It's under design. That makes sense.

55:12 Tony Sindelar: Yeah.

[chuckle]

55:13 Tiffany Hogan: So you click on it and it tells you ideas.

55:15 Tony Sindelar: And it gives you a lot more engaging layouts.

55:17 Tiffany Hogan: Yeah. It says that here's the possible ways you could change what you wrote or what you did.

55:22 Tony Sindelar: And one thing I would probably say, visuals super matter when PowerPoints or presentations need to be visually engaging. At the very least, they need to be not disengaging and distracting. And they need... Professionalism means different things to different context, so a presentation you'd give to kids is gonna look different than a presentation you'd give at your professional conference. But there is... It means something. It needs to meet that standard. Something I would encourage people to be careful about, again that place where you can get sucked in to PowerPoint, that might be stuff you are working on toward the end of your process. You don't wanna be re-working your slides and making them all look really pretty if you haven't finished putting in your information. Again, it's like how much... Most of us have gotten past this, but are you spending a bunch of time picking out what font your paper is gonna be when you only have one paragraph, versus write the whole paper and then, if you have any time left, you could play with your fonts? Also, don't play with your fonts, just use something simple.

[laughter]

56:15 Tiffany Hogan: But I think it is a good point though, and it goes back to thinking about content over format. You want your content to drive the presentation by thinking about the goals, thinking about the key points, thinking about your constraints, the outline. But then you want the visual to augment...

56:33 Tony Sindelar: It's gotta line up with that.

56:34 Tiffany Hogan: What you want and facilitate it. On that note, looking at our time, I will wrap up. But I appreciate so much the information you've given, Tony, 'cause it may seem obvious, but it's not, to those who are... To those on these presentations, so thank you so much for your time.

56:51 Tony Sindelar: It was a pleasure. I think PowerPoint is a really interesting tool, whether you think it's good or bad. But for a ubiquitous tool, we have not gotten ubiquitous with our good habits yet. Day by day.

[chuckle]

57:08 Tiffany Hogan Check out www.seehearspeakpodcast.com for helpful resources associated with this podcast including, for example, the podcast transcript, research articles, & speakers bios. You can also sign up for email alerts on the website or subscribe to the podcast on apple podcasts or any other listening platform, so you will be the first to hear about new episodes.

Thank you for listening and good luck to you, making the world a better place by helping one child at a time.