Showing posts with label
Humor as an instructional defibrillator.
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Showing posts with label
Humor as an instructional defibrillator.
Show all posts
FOUR MORE STRATEGIES FOR SIZZLING TITLES
Here are the next 4 of 8 strategies to make your titles spiffy in order to grab various body parts of your readers:
4. Tease me with something I want to know. Tell your readers just enough to tease them into opening your attachment or scrolling down to find out your mystery message. Play with your readers’ minds. Unravel your content slowly. Don’t throw it in their faces.
News broadcasts use “teasers” before commercial breaks all the time. They want you back, not in the fridge. TV programs air trailers and previews of the next program during commercials of the current program AND during the program on the bottom of the screen to tease you into staying tuned to watch it.
5. Spin it so I can easily understand. The trick is to spin your topic into language your niche readers can understand. Avoid jargon, unless absolutely necessary. If your reader can’t figure out your title, why should they go any further? DELETE!
6. Use words to create visual images. Be clever in your wording. Use cultural links or metaphors to create images in the minds of your readers. They make a strong, lasting impression.
One image that has always stuck with me is humor writer and columnist Dave Barry’s example: “A major cause of death among fashion super-models is falling through street grates.” I can’t shake that hilarious visual. One of my humor books is titled Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator.
7. Use cultural phenomena to connect with me. Stimuli in our culture can create an emotional connection. TV and movie titles and characters, in particular, build an immediate, strong connection. Your readers already are excited or interested in the cultural element. Then you can hit them with the content element.
For example, if you include the word “Avatar” in your title, you’ll grab the attention of a lot of readers. Recently, I posted 2 blogs on “Avatar: A Few Lessons on Teaching” (Jan 27 & 28, 2010). They both had a much higher than normal frequency of viewing. Draw on what readers already know and ignite their interests to capture their emotions first before introducing your content title words.
Guess what? We’re batting 87.5% so far. There’s one more strategy to go that’s a bit longer than the preceding 7, and it’s a doozy. Hold on to your titles. I saved the most widely used and, possibly, most effective technique for last. Notice the tease. I hope it works.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
And the Number 1 Technique:
1. HUMOR
Surprise, Surprise! I saved the best for last. How have you incorporated humor into your PowerPoint? You haven’t? Oh, for shame. If you’re thinking about breaking the mold, humor will smash it to smithereens. And, I know you can be funny. You just need to find the format that works naturally for you.
A wide range of humor techniques has been presented previously in my 3 humor books (see link in right margin or my Web). This blog addresses how the PowerPoint software can facilitate the delivery of your humor. It provides visual and audio capabilities that can increase the impact of humor material. You provide the material. PowerPoint can help you with the HOW!
(HINT: Unless you’re Robin Williams, use visual and audio PowerPoint elements to maximize the effect of the humor, especially custom animation options.)
Here are a Baker’s half dozen ideas (or 7 Humorous Habits of Highly Effective Professors):
1. Still Pictures—Select stills that make a point, but are also funny. Add appropriate music to heighten impact.
2. Cartoons—Use single panel or multi-panel cartoons that are visually bigger than life. Present 1 panel at a time and read the one-liner caption in the bubble.
3. Video Clips—Pick hilarious clips from movies, TV programs, YouTube, JibJab, and other sources to exaggerate a point or concept.
4. Music Clips—Choose funny music, incongruous lyrics, or sound effects to accompany animations on slides, jokes, or skits involving groups of participants.
5. One-Liners—Instead of delivering a joke as a stand-up, use the visual AND audio effects to set up your serious premise on your slide and then fly the punch line onto the slide on cue to increase your chances of success. Timing is critical.
6. Multiple-Choice Jokes—Same as one-liners, just do the punches 4–5 times.
7. Top 10 Lists—Same as one-liners, just do the punches 10 times. Watch Letterman’s delivery and timing as each line enters on cue.
WOW!! Was this blog series looooong! As you’ll recall, it began in 1956. I hope you got 1 or 2 ideas you can use. I look forward to hearing how your PowerPoint life has been changed forever. Let me know your thoughts, reactions, new techniques I missed, or anything that hits you.
Have an incredible teaching and presenting PowerPoint year!!!
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
4. MUSIC CLIPS
BACKGROUND: Using music as a tool for presentations and teaching across all disciplines is not new. However, the technology has made it so easy to execute that music has become a powerful add-on to increase the impact of PowerPoints.
I started including music clips in the form of cassette tapes (Remember them?) before PowerPoint in my statistics courses 20 years. They were used to accompany classroom demonstrations, parodies and skits, and introductions to new topics.
In 2005 I converted over to PowerPoint, but the trip was painful. No one in my academic circle knew how to extract a clip, convert it to wav format, and insert it into PowerPoint. Neither PowerPoint instructors nor IT experts knew the mechanics of that process. Certainly, there was no faculty demand for music, so IT support didn’t bother to address it.
After many hours of trial and error as a nontechy, I finally learned to do the conversion in spring 2006 with 1 piece of software. Almost 4 years later, music has become an integral part and, in fact, trademark of every PowerPoint presentation I make on every “serious” topic. It contributes an emotional dimension to each presentation that sets the tone throughout and engages my audience. I have conducted numerous workshops in the past 2 years to faculty audiences at conferences and institutions on the mechanics because they too don’t receive the support they need.
To start the musical ball rolling, I would like to identify a few key sources on music below. My future blogs will list the (1) types of music you could use, (2) generic techniques for infusing music into any presentation, and (3) available software for importing music into your PowerPoint.
BERK SOURCES: I recommend you download my most recent article on music from my Website (http://www.ronberk.com/; see link in right margin) which reviews the research and describes the techniques in depth with loads of examples (click Publications, then Articles):
Berk, R. A. (2008c). Music and music technology in college teaching: Classical to hip hop across the curriculum. International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning, 4(1), 45–67.
That article extends the work in a previous article:
Berk, R. A. (2001b).Using music with demonstrations to trigger laughter and facilitate learning in multiple intelligences. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 12(1), 97–107.
and chapter in my Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator book (Stylus link in right margin).
If you are interested in using music to create parodies of TV programs, movies, and Broadway shows, parody scripts for Star Wars, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and many others are in the Defib chapter. The step-by-step procedures for developing a parody using CSI as an example are presented in the final chapter of my latest 2009 book Top Secret Tips…(see Coventry Press link in margin).
My next blog will cover types of music and a dozen generic techniques. See you then. Let me know if you have experimented with music.
COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
