Daniel Dunworth

Virtual Presentation Best Practices

Learning Engagement And Development Manager, Pivot Point

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Excellent. Thank you very much, Chris, I appreciate it. And again, thank you for having me return. It’s always a pleasure to be able to work with Oozle Media and the entire team, and once again to be able to see you all.

So, Carlos, I see you in the chat saying that you’ve got some pretty good beard game going, and hopefully I can bring some competition your way, and maybe like many of you, maybe even working on a little bit of the quarantine type of cuts nowadays.

But, very excited and glad to be here on behalf of Pivot Point and share with you all some virtual presentation best practices. Now with this, I definitely do not envy many of the presenters, as we’re all working in the 20 minutes, and hopefully I can give you some really good bang for your buck during this time.

And especially for those of you, regardless of what your position may be in the school, whether you are an owner, director, whether you’re working in some form of an administrative position, or you yourself are also an educator and even maybe wear all of those hats at one time, hopefully this information can really just give you some tools to continue to engage with learners today.

I think we all know when it comes to the education realm, that it is definitely different than it ever has been. And this past year, like others have mentioned, things have changed. And it’s very hard to go backwards, but we’re going to definitely keep going forward. Whether or not virtual education is going to be something that’s always permanent for you, I think it’s always going to be a part of what you might offer to your learners in the future.

So with this, what I really want to just start talking about is a little bit of what we… What I’m going to share with you today are these kind of best practices. As many of you may have experienced, I’ve spent a ton of time on Zoom. Zoom is just, I mean, they’re killing it with everything when it comes to virtual seminars, meetings, we’re probably using it for work. We’re using it to deliver education nowadays.

Some of these also can apply to other things, but I’m going to give you some best practices that we here at Pivot Point have been using for the past now year plus, and really taking a look at how we can make sure our education delivery is just as strong, is bringing this very, very attractive standard of excellence to our learners in that classroom, and what our educators can do.

So what I want to share with you as we go through today is I’m going to share a checklist. Now, this checklist that I’m going to share with you, I’m going to put it into the chat in just a moment. You’ll be able to get access to it just via Dropbox. I want it to be pretty easy for you all. But with that, I will share a link right at the end as I step off camera, so you’ll be able to access it.

And I’m going to talk a little bit about what this checklist can help you with preparing for your virtual education delivery.

And even with this, I mean, some of this stuff is just… We’ve been using it in the classroom on a pretty regular basis, but we’ve had to transition. And most times we can plan for transition, but again, a year ago we were thrown into some of these situations and we had to figure it out on the fly.

We didn’t get the opportunity to really ask too many questions. Am I doing this the right way? I kind of just… Almost a little bit like a sink or swim. But now we’ve had time to sit down, reflect, refine. And this checklist, I think, is a tool that can help you continue to raise that standard, that bar of excellence as we move forward.

Now, this checklist is going to break things down into two categories for you. We’re going to talk about preparation and presentation, right? So really taking a look at this, it’s going to be all about what can we do to make sure things are successful, and then go successfully for us. And again, in 20 minutes you’re going to get a bit of a crash course on this one here.

But what you can expect to see is when you do access that Dropbox link that I’ll be sharing in just a moment, you are going to see a checklist that’s just going to help you ask some of these key questions about your virtual presentation:

• Is there going to be material that you need?
• Where are you going to be presenting?
• What does your setup look like?
• Are you fully prepared to share the information in the most successful way that you possibly can?

There is this video that I saw many years ago about if conference calls were real life in a meeting. And you’ve got the people that are disconnecting, connecting, they’re talking and they think they’re on mute. We have all probably experienced those types of Zoom meetings where we want to share a video but the video is not sharing, or all of a sudden we can’t hear it, or we’re not seeing it, or you share the wrong screen.

All of these things are exactly what I like to think about when I went into my classrooms to present. Did I have my right supplies? Did I have all of my tools? Do I have the right videos I need for class, or the right resources, the right devices? All of that is things we still need to consider. And now that we’re all on devices, we’ve got things in different places.

So again, this checklist is really going to be here to kind of help you out. It’s going to be that tool to help kind of keep you on track, make sure that you maximize all the resources you can.

Again, this is designed to match Zoom functionality, so we’ll kind of talk about some specific references, and I’ll also share some screenshots just to even point a few things out.

Again, two different sections to look at. And you’ll even see, which again I’m going to cut from today, because it’s 20 minutes. There are going to be some additional tips that you want to consider.

Now, keep in mind, Zoom has different offerings for different people, depending on how you sign up for it and what you do. There are both the free, the freemium and premium options. But again, I’m going to talk about just some functionality that you can find on Zoom. And I see that, Kim! We’ve all been that hot mess before. Sometimes we’re even that hot mess when we don’t want it to be, and it just comes unexpected.

Preparation

1. Set Up Devices Properly

So let’s jump right in and talk about some of this preparation. What can we do to be best prepared for our seminars on Zoom? So with that, let’s just jump into number one, set up your devices appropriately. Now I say devices because nowadays we actually like to recommend using two devices when you’re doing Zoom presentations.

Whether it be something theory driven, or even something that’s going to be like a demonstration, if you’re going to work on a model or a mannequin, it works really well if you can log into your Zoom on two devices. One being maybe a phone or a tablet that you’re actually capturing your video with right here, and the other might be a laptop or computer that you’re able to monitor your presentation on so you could actually see yourself.

And for me, an example today is I do have one device that’s capturing me so I can see myself right on camera, and I’ve got another one off to the side where I can see chat, I can monitor, I can even see myself on a bigger screen so I can make sure, am I blocking any information that I need to here?

So with that, a couple of things you want to consider. Again, are both logged into the Zoom meeting? And, make sure your camera is working. Now, many devices have multiple cameras. Are you using the proper rear facing or forward facing camera? Take time to test this out, and really work with your devices to get familiar with it.

And I’ll show from a fellow educator on the team, many of you may know him and love him, Jason Russell. He does many live student sessions with us where he’s demonstrating hands-on techniques for a number of different topics and resources.

This is an example of some of the resources he used on a regular basis to present his mannequin or model sessions. He has an iPad with a ring light around it. We’ll talk about lighting in just a little bit. He has a laptop off to the side that allows him to easily interact with chat, interact as a participant, and monitor things.

And then he adds two additional lights on the side. And again, lighting is really important. We have to remember that when it comes to lighting, many of our participants are watching on different devices which come with different screen sizes. So a big part of this is going to be, can they see what they’re going for?

But these types of things, again, most of us will have multiple devices. If not, and you have a single device, just to make sure that you run through some testing with that camera, and you’re logged in properly to the right account.

I’ve been there. And I’ll mention this to you. I have logged in to a Zoom meeting before where I grabbed my tablet and my kids had just used it for a conference call. So I logged in as one of my kids, and people had no idea. They were like, “I don’t understand, who’s joining the meeting?” I could hear it and I was like, “Oh, sorry. I just logged into Zoom, I didn’t realize my kids were logged in just before me.” And with that, I logged into a different account. I didn’t have all the information I needed with it.

So just be mindful when working especially with those shared devices.

2. Test Your Audio

So hopefully that helps out. Let’s jump into tip number two here. Test your audio. There’s many, many things that can go wrong with audio nowadays, are you connected to the right headset? Are your earbuds fully charged? Is your phone close enough to you, or are you going to wander away from it? Is your mic on mute still? All these different things.

You can control so much audio settings from inside of Zoom, everyone that’s on Zoom when you connect, you typically will see that video down in the lower left corner for your audio settings. Now, the beautiful part is if you do head into those audio settings and you’re checking this out, especially with multiple devices, you can even control the volume.

So when people say, “I can’t quite hear you,” or maybe you can’t quite hear a participant, not only of course, can you just dial in to Zoom, but you can come in here and start moving around these sliders to adjust the actual volume inside of Zoom, not just on your computer speakers or on your device.

So, go in there and find the right settings that help you present clearly and easily for everyone to hear, and that you can hear all of your participants. Not only that, there’s so many other options that you can come into here and just fine tune and tweak to make your meetings and your session just perfect.

The other thing, because I mentioned two devices are really recommended now to get a great Zoom meeting going, is when you have that second device, we’ve all probably sat on one of those Zoom meetings before where you start to get that loud echo, that high pitch squealing that comes in.

Now with that, you want to make sure that your second device is completely muted. You want the volume turned off. You actually might need to come in and disable the audio on that second device. And if you’re using a mobile device, sometimes just take a look for that little silent switch. Make sure that that’s even switched to mute, so there are no possibilities for that extra audio echo.

Again, we’ve all been there where you just want to rip the headphones or quickly turn the volume down because that squealing comes in. So check out those settings and that functionality again to fine tune it.

3. Ensure Room Lighting Is Adequate

Let’s jump on into step number three here. Ensure room lighting is adequate. This is really important. Now, if you’re going to be demonstrating any type of techniques, if you’re going to be displaying anything, pay attention to the lighting.

Where is the lighting coming from? Is it coming directly at you from the side? Are you using natural lighting? And is that kind of come in brighter and darker? Do you maybe have any storms that might come in that afternoon that are going to take that natural lighting away?

Again, ring lighting is a very cheap and affordable option that you can get, you saw that from Jason’s display earlier, that you might want to consider just picking that up, or maybe even having a couple of them to help light up your space.

Another thing is for those of us that might be in a classroom and doing meetings where we have boards, or we might be using any type of information, some of us have picked up those mobile whiteboards. Again, bright lighting can cause intense glare, and it may not be very easy for your participants to be able to see. So again, test out with the lighting.

We’ll talk more about the more lighting you bring in, sometimes it can bring up some other complications. But test out the right lighting, to be able to make sure that you yourself and anything you’re ever trying to present is easily viewable.

And again, sometimes it just takes doing a few dry runs, your own practice runs on a Zoom meeting, and just looking at your other device. Two devices is key, right? And then you could really test out those positions.

So lighting, super important because everyone needs to be able to see. We’re no longer really able to tell our learners, “Come on up here, get a little closer, take a look.” We’ve got to make sure that the video we present is super sharp.

4. Organize Tools and Equipment

So with that, let’s go ahead and take a look at step number four here when it comes to our presentation, or sorry, preparation, is organize your tools and equipment. I think this is pretty standard.

But when it comes to typically gathering things for our classrooms, our educators, or we as educators are getting supplies from a dispensary from our classrooms, from our storage, we also have to remember that there’s a lot of information we might need that’s on our device. Do you have your tools like your mouse, again, your headphones, your phone, keyboard, fully charged? If you’re going to be working wirelessly, we are those all connected properly?

If you’re going to be working on a mannequin, and your tools all available and organized?

This is one thing again that I always like to put out here, and I’ll be bringing her back and forth, but I’ve got my mannequin stand right here. I always love to have a nice little tool caddy right on my tripod so I can move everything pretty easily. And we’ll bring this Erica back out in a little bit.

But, organize your tools so they’re easy in reach, they’re nearby, they’re not going to tip over, topple over. That we’ve got to be almost sometimes mobile when we’re moving around our own classrooms, which are now our rooms, right? Our bedrooms, our offices, our living rooms or dining rooms, even. So again, stay organized.

So with that, kind of takes us a little bit through our preparation. Like I said, each four of these are there on that checklist. Alright, so I just want to recap that you’ll be able to see those lists and those details.

5. Prepare an Opening and Closing

But let’s jump into our fifth and final item for our preparation, and that is to prepare an opening and closing. I always recommend, especially in Zoom meetings, people want to make sure they arrive at the right place at the right time. Having something as simple as that welcome or thank you screen, I’m going to give a huge shout out to Chris on the Oozle team, because I actually love that if someone were to disconnect and log back in, you guys have been using those fantastic, “Hey, we’re on a break kind of screen” for that meeting that’s still running.

Those are brilliant moves to make so that way everybody knows exactly what’s happening that time. And for those people that are first logging in, if they are able to log in and connect before you, rather than a waiting room, that they at least see that they are welcomed to the proper session.

And when you close, rather than just a cold stop, being able to just put that little slide up there that says “thank you” or “see you next time.” Or again, any type of recap and closing allows people to know that they’ve truly reached the finale of what they should expect to be seeing.

So, those are a few extra tips that even if you’re going to be doing live meetings, live demonstrations, having an open and a closer are really important and make an impact.

With that, let’s keep on hopping, everyone. Again, we’re down to just a few minutes left. Let’s talk about our presentation and everything that we have here that we want to consider in working with.

Presentation

Now for these steps, a few things I’m going to point out again with Zoom functionality. I’m going to highlight these.

1. Share Your Screen

When it comes to your presentation, sharing your screen is so important and so key here on Zoom. Zoom allows you to share in multiple different ways, and if you even look at it, they’re always adding new features. Like even being able to use a PowerPoint screen and put you down in the corner rather than off to the side, but almost like this mock green screen effect with your PowerPoints.

But what I want to highlight and just show you here is when looking at it, and you do click and you’re the presenter, you have that share screen option down below. Take a look at all the functionality that it gives you.

Again, I’m just going to be very honest with you. I’ve been on a number of Zoom meetings where the wrong window has been shared, the wrong screen has been shared. Maybe you’ve got two different monitors on your computer.

When looking at that, share the right piece of information and pay attention to what you’re choosing. Are you going to be sharing a full screen? Are you going to be sharing just a certain device application or tool that’s on there?

And if you really want to play around, check out the advanced sharing option, where you could even share audio and music without having to share your screen. So you can have that kind of welcome lobby effect. Or again, do you want to use a PowerPoint as your virtual background, rather than a typical green screen?

So a lot of those different options when it comes to sharing, just go ahead and choose that proper option.

Another thing that I find to be very beneficial when doing my live seminars, especially with students and sometimes people like to just click around, is when you share, consider disabling the ability for anyone else to share while you’re sharing. I’ve had this happen in some of my earliest, when I first was new to Zoom, I had people interrupting my screen-share and taking over it. I had to learn about this pretty quickly that I want to lock it down to just me.

2. Play Video or Sound

With that, let’s go ahead and take a look at tip number two here for our presentation, playing video or sound. This can actually be just a little bit tricky. There’s one box that I find many people have a tendency to miss when they go to share a video.

So with that, when you go to share your screen, before you choose that screen and go ahead and hit share, pay attention in that lower, what would that be, left-hand corner. There’s a little box that when you check it, it asks you if you want to share your screen audio. And make sure you give that a check so that way everybody can actually hear the same video sound that you do.

I’ve been on a number of those, and I’ve even done it myself plenty of times when that audio wasn’t coming through, but the video was coming in silent. So check that out, it can really help a lot when you are planning to share content, especially if we’re going to do things like YouTube videos or any pre recordings as well.

3. Need To Share the Presentation

Going into number three for the presentation. Again, do you need to share the presentation afterwards? Again, Zoom does give the ability to allow you to record it, and typically there’s two recording options. That recording option is typically on the cloud or on your device. And you’ve got to think about what’s going to be the easiest for you to be able to share this afterwards.

If you choose to share to the cloud or record to the cloud, know that you’re going to get a link and there’s going to be a password that you’re going to need to share with participants afterwards.

Or, if you record to your computer, that means that you now have to actually manage a physical file or digital file, and will you be able to easily email that or do you have to then upload it to another site? So, think about what you need as far as the size of it, the convenience of it, and how wide you need that message to be spread. But those options can help you easily record and share for later.

I love recording as many of my Zoom presentations as possible, just because it gives me the convenience now that if I’m working with my learners and someone’s absent from my classroom, or if I’m doing a team meeting and one of my coworkers are absent, then they have the ability to get caught up without, “Hey, you know I’m…” [They can watch] this content on their own.

And I do see another question here when it comes to, “how am I even walking on and off screen?” And I’ll share that with you in just a moment.

4. Need To Share Documents

But I’m going to step off one more time and head right on into the next tip here. Do you need to share document? One thing I want you to just go ahead and even look for, next time you’re looking to share a file, pay attention in your chat.

Sometimes your chat might allow you to actually drop a file right into the chat, and you don’t have to email a PowerPoint presentation, a PDF, a Word doc, or an Excel. You might be able to just drop this right into your chat and everyone can get access to that. So that’s a quick and simple one. I want to point out that again, sometimes Zoom will let you do that.

A lot of these features, I will also point out, if you don’t see them immediately go to zoom.us and go to your profile and settings there, and you have the ability to actually turn on or turn off some of these settings. So, if you don’t see it, you might actually just have to go and flip a little switch in your profile on Zoom and be able to start using those tools.

5. Ask for Participant Feedback

A couple of things, and these ones will relate pretty similar, this asking for participant feedback. I think you guys have all been doing a wonderful job engaging with the chat. I see a lot of you in the chat talking, but also try to use with people that you engage with the ability to use different reactions.

In a typical Zoom meeting, you’ll see participants where you can then see, are you… Do you want your participants to ask you to go faster, go slower? Are they doing well? Do they need a break? Or maybe even use things like reactions, where they give you that thumbs up, thumbs down.

These are great ways to still create, these guys here, still create that kind of connection with your participants, whether it’s your learners, teammates, someone outside your company, getting that engagement is so important. We’ve been so disconnected from each other, the closer we can get to this live interaction, the better that we all enjoy it. So look for those tools.

6. Demonstrate Hands-On

Another one I want to share with you here is if you ever have to demonstrate hands on. Taking a look at how you need your participants to see the information. And this is one thing I’ll just mention, that on my camera that I’m using, having the idea of a second device allows you to easily move that in and out of the screen, and be able to pull this closer to you, back it up a little bit and not have to move an entire computer.

So if you haven’t invested in one yet, you may even want to consider something like a webcam, or again, that second device is so beneficial.

7. Need To Demonstrate Multiple Slides

Now I’ve got a couple last ones, and I know I’m running close on my time here, but if you also need to demonstrate, I talked about my mannequin earlier. One thing I’m going to go ahead and just put that out there, for those of us that are educators, we’ve been able to gather people around us, Pivot Point, we had out here for a while this swivel tripod, I’m going to just bring this Erica up a little bit.

I love using this tripod and this swivel base, because I can now stay in one place out of the view of my camera and start moving my mannequin around to get to a new side, without having to interrupt the view of my students. Try to work smarter and not harder when it comes to your setup.

What tools and resources do you have access to that can make your presentation the absolute smoothest they can possibly be?

And there’s things like that that we’ve had for a little while that are so handy. Tripods, swivels, tools, caddies. Try to be organized and set up your classrooms in the most convenient way possible.

8. Using Electrical Tools

My very last tip that I have for you, tip number eight is using electrical tools. This is a little bit more safety. Listen, we are all plugging more and more stuff into our bedrooms now if you’re doing a Zoom meeting from there. Computers, laptops, phones, devices, lights, blow dryers, curling irons, steam machines, you turned your own home into small studios or salon barber shop style rooms.

And that’s more cords, more power. Before you ever go and start connecting everything, of course, do your safety checks. But watch out, pay attention to those extra cables, the extra power that you need.

I don’t know, I absolutely love the movie, but if anyone here has ever seen the movie Christmas Story, when that Christmas tree kind of burns out and they’ve got those lights and plugs all over the place, Griswolds with the Christmas Vacation, those plugs that are just dangling from each other, it’s not what you want in your own rooms of your home.

Try to make sure that you work smartly when plugging in all these extra lights, cords, tools. Your room is going to have a limit to what it can draw in, and you don’t want things to just start burning out on you, especially if you’ve had those investments in it.

Now I know this went quick, 20 minutes quick here getting into it. If you ever want to chat more about this, and you want to get a little bit more information, feel free to email me anytime. You can get here ddunworth@pivot-point.com. Once again, I am also going to post that link to the Dropbox so you can actually get that checklist from me.

And for those of you, since a couple of did ask, how am I actually walking on and off screen? I don’t want to keep this my own little trade secret here whatsoever, but I actually have set up an entire PowerPoint presentation, and I have saved it as a virtual background on Zoom.

So if you ever want to just up the game there a little bit with how you present that way, go to Zoom. You can upload pictures of your PowerPoint presentation, and I’m simply just walking in and off camera with a green screen behind me.

It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it, but simply save PowerPoint files as pictures, and then upload those pictures as virtual backgrounds. And you can start to turn your cameras into what we like to now call at Pivot Point the “weather man style.” It’s a great way to elevate your Zoom presentation.

Hopefully again, this information has been pretty helpful for you. Reach out, again, if you want to talk more about this, if you want to get into a little bit more of that detail with it, I’m going to just pull that contact information up one more time.

I think I have gone pretty close to my window here. I’m going to take a look at the chat and see if there’s any questions. I appreciate all the feedback. Thank you, Parker, for putting that email address in that chat as well. And again, hopefully I’ll talk to you all soon. Chris, this has been a wonderful event. I think I’m getting through it pretty quick here. 20 minutes is a hustle.

Chris:

I know. Hey, Daniel, world-class. You did awesome, man. Thank you so much.