How Much is Enough

I am amazed that in spite of what we know about curiosity driven epistemic engagement, we still put a high value on lengthy lectures, dependency on textbook usage and tedious pencil-paper testing. It isn't that these pedagogical devices fail - but, that we overlook an opportunity to exploit the learners' ability to awaken neurophysiological gateways stimulated with minimally familiar material. What the heck am I talking about?
 

Describe a typical PKhour

The idea behind the PKhour, unlike the Pecha Kucha Nights, is to select three topics that are focused upon a specific skillset - like leadership, business communication, social responsibility, community asset development. During the hour long event, the three presentations (each 6min40sec long) are run with NO space between, so that they fill the first 20 minutes. This means that when speaker two sees the presentation at 18 of 20, they get up and stand on deck, waiting for speaker one to conclude. When speaker two has slide 1 of 20 showing, the microphone for speaker one is turned off and speaker two is live.

Welcome

It's time to reintroduce the power of being "to the point" using the Pecha Kucha (PK) format. Imagine, you are asked to give an engaging presentation in under ten (10) minutes. You are confident that you write and deliver a great speech, but there is so much information to cover. Being self-motivated, you write the speech out and record yourself reading it, with feeling. Total run time is twelve minutes ... and that is after making liberal edits to the material.

There is a solution, the Pecha Kucha! Since 2003, people around the world have been using this approach to a) make their presentations visually appealing and b) to keep their presentation to 6 minutes and 40 seconds - precisely. How do they do it?

The approach is simple, use 20 slides which are mostly images - the fewer words the better. Then, you set the timing on each slide to 20 seconds. Number the slides starting at "1 of 20" through "20 of 20."  You then let the images do the talking for you, with roughly one short paragraph per slide! Then you know that you will not only have it under ten minutes, but you will have time for Q&A. Instead of giving a good presentation, you hit it out of the park.  You are the envy of all your peers.

Keep visiting, we plan to share how you can use the PK Hour approach to deliver a months worth of professional development in 60 minutes!