As fate would have it, an interesting article appeared in the Straits times on the 29th May which seem to vocie the same opinions as our earlier blog posting regarding teachers and the use of powerpoint. Although in a wider context it’s really the use of multimedia which is at their disposal.

The article by Straits Times reporter Ho Ai Li reads as:

IF YOU can’t get students to stop listening to trashy pop songs, join them.

Listen to the songs in class and give students the skills to analyse the songs for themselves, said Dr Maha Sripathy, president of the English Language and Literature Teachers Association, Singapore. She was speaking to teachers at an association conference, titled Multiliteracies: Connecting With The Language Classroom, held at Suntec Singapore yesterday.

Educators at the conference gave tips on how teachers can use new media to engage students. The one-day event was supported by the Singapore Press Holdings Foundation. The common thread running through the presentations of main speakers - English literature professor Koh Tai Ann and new media academic Dr Lim Sun Sun - was the importance of providing students with analytical skills in a media-saturated world.

Expanding on this, Dr Sripathy encouraged teachers to bring the real world into the classroom and engage students by using pop culture as a tool. In pop group Aqua’s song Barbie Girl, for example, one line goes: ‘Life in plastic, it’s fantastic.’ Teachers can ask their charges to discuss what the line really means, suggested Dr Sripathy.  

Students may protest that they are ‘just listening to the song’, but teachers can sensitise them to its meaning and ask them what message they would send out if they were to sing it. Likewise, students can dissect a Pussycat Dolls song in class, considering questions such as why the group has chosen to go by this name. 

Visual literacy is another important facet, given that students are constantly bombarded with visual images in their daily lives, said Dr Sripathy. ‘A picture paints a thousand words. But what are the thousand words in there?’ she asked. Using clips from the Visa advertisement starring Richard Gere and the movie Titanic, she showed teachers how they could get students thinking about class and social distinctions.

 By arming students with the skills to make sense of texts and pop cultural products, teachers go beyond imparting language skills, said Dr Sripathy. They are empowering students to think about issues and develop their own opinions.

This article first appeared in Personnel Today magazine 

A dark shadow of deep-seated cultural prejudice threatens to limit the competitiveness of UK organisations [as well as in Asia ]. This prejudice takes the form of a profound bias in management and executive circles, and boardrooms, favouring so-called ‘hard’ skills and knowledge, such as finance, technology, and legal, against the allegedly ’soft’ skills, which include the ability to manage working relationships. This bias is reflected in the focus on hard metrics, with much less focus on the means of achieving the hard figures through people.

Ironically, for many managers, the soft skills are the hard skills. Ask anyone who has had to manage change, deal with organisational politics, or build a disparate group of people into an effective team.

Soft skills are essentially the skills of relationship management and creativity, underpinned by emotional intelligence. These include the ability to empathise with others, manage conflict, cope with ambiguity and paradox, and navigate a route through complex interpersonal and strategic scenarios. So why is it that the very terms ’soft’ and ‘hard’ imply the very opposite? And why is it that UK managers are traditionally sceptical about the importance of soft skills and, by their attitudes, discount them?

Part of the answer lies in business school education. Generations of business people have been educated to believe that effective management and leadership principally require ‘hard’ strategic and analytical skills, a clear understanding of the dynamics of business and the ability to make effective decisions.

 Managers have been trained to look for evidence and data as the basis for decision-making. Business cultures have conventionally relegated emotions and social values to the sidelines. As a result, we have generations of managers who find that they lack the skills to help them deal with issues relating to the motivation, management and development of human beings. Managers can be forgiven for putting people-related issues and decisions into the ‘too difficult’ box.

Without the ability to communicate and engage effectively with staff, managers are unlikely to be able to implement tomorrow’s strategic plan. Without self-awareness, flexibility and resilience, managers are likely to keep doing what they always did, long after the need for a different approach arises.

 HR should be in a strong position to build the business case. As designers of succession planning processes, HR can ensure that tomorrow’s leaders are developed into great organisational as well as business leaders. HR professionals are in a good position to coach leaders at all levels and design development and reward processes that nurture the skills that make organisations tick effectively. As change agents, HR professionals are more aware than most of the cost of poorly managed change processes in terms of employee motivation. If we add up the consequences of the lack of soft skills evident in terms of high staff turnover, the cost of new recruits, creative opportunities lost or not capitalised on, and the inability of top management to make decisions, the business case for addressing the soft skills deficit becomes obvious.

All too often the phrases such as “I don’t need PowerPoint”, “I don’t have time to do fancy graphics” or “I have never needed it before” ring very often from those who have been teaching or training for some years. But just like the industry, market forces and consumer tastes have changed and the same old product (trainer/ teacher) is beginning to fail in delivering an interesting product. Without injecting new features/ benefits into the product, the consumer (student/client) will wonder off to someone who can provide the product that suits their needs. Without a doubt the trainer/ teacher and their ability to articulate the knowledge, personally connect and remain genuine in their passion for the craft will always be a foundation for a great trainer/ teacher.

And not withstanding to the contrary, the world we lived in has changed, students, clients have become multi-tasking, multi-media savvy and their stimulus for learning has changed and those that can generate information in a variety of formats will surely win the game of engagement. PowerPoint has become a default tool for presenting information; however, needless to say it is a tool that not everyone uses very well. Just like a hammer and chisel, everyone can bang bits of rock, but not everyone can sculpt without learning to use the tools beyond their functionality.

In essence, (presentations skills and teaching delivery aside), there remain 3 critical areas to ensuring the PowerPoint and/or Media you provide will take you (the product) to another level:

q       Design Skills

q       Visual Thinking

q       Content Management

In Singapore , the government has already laid the foundations with initiatives such as iN2015, Future Classrooms and other e & m-learning developments.

Are you part of this sector who feels they need to upgrade their ability in providing a richer variety of media in this sector?

Terri Sjodins ‘New Sales Speak: 9 Biggest Sales Presentation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them’ provides both good presentation advice, but also good Sales advice, especially in the areas where sales most likely fail – i.e. the close. If you get a chance, I suggest you read this book as it reverse engineers what is bad about presentations (especially sales presentations) from an audience perspective, something which I have been doing in my own presentation training. This way, you can nail home very quickly what everyone hates to see from the start – and avoid it. It has useful strategies on How to close Sale presentations (call to action), Being Boring, Body Language and much more.

One good example that incorporated into a lot of presentations is the concept of the ‘Harm’ scenario. A techniques being used in advertising now for many years.She gave several good examples in her book such as the about Mouth Wash. In the 1980’s, mouth wash was advertised based on its FAB (features, advantages and benefits), the message being that with a great smelling breath someone will likely kiss you. Jump forward to the year 2000’s and now advertisers are using HARM to sell their products. Now, if you don’t use mouth wash you’ll be at risk of bad breath, gum problems, and worst of all – never be kissed. They managed to turn the product into a ‘must have’ rather than a ‘good to have’.

Try to think about some of the other products out there being advertised using the HARM factor now? You’ll be surprised just how many there are. Do you work for a company that sells based on this scenario – if not, would it work?