Friday, May 10, 2013

Using live animals in presentations, and other useful tips




















 Last August I blogged about watching a 4-H speech at the Western Idaho Fair. This month someone showed me that last year the University of Idaho Extension 4-H Youth Development Program published a 20-page .pdf file on how to Speak up with Confidence (Tips on Presenting in Nine Key Areas). You can download their Bulletin 880 here. It contains tips on nine topics:

Tips #1 Putting Parts of a Presentation Together
Tips #2 Planning and Organizing a Presentation
Tips #3 Types of Presentations
Tips #4 Using Multimedia
Tips #5 Mechanics of Presenting
Tips #6 Getting Your Message Across with Posters
Tips #7 Creative Hooks
Tips #8 Food Demonstrations
Tips #9 Using Live Animals in Presentations


Live animals can be unpredictable. The following 15-minute clip from the David Letterman shows how even a very experienced presenter like Jack Hanna can have surprises. Watch him dive onto the counter to keep the lesser anteater away from Dave’s cup full of pencils. The seriema smashing a rubber lizard onto a rock is the biggest surprise for the studio audience.





In a 2010 TED talk Temple Grandin discussed how animals perceive the world very differently than we do, so what they see, hear, or smell can terrify them, unless you understand their viewpoint.

The image of a man leading horses came from the Library of Congress.

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