Try These Zoom Presentation Tips from Garr Reynolds

Garr Reynolds is one of the world's foremost experts on presentation design. If you haven't seen any of his TED Talks or read Presentation Zen, put it on your to-do list. I follow Garr Reynolds on Twitter and this morning he Tweeted a link to a new video of his in which he explains why and how to use picture-in-picture when giving a presentation in Zoom. 

In Do This in Zoom to Make Amazing Visual Presentations Garr Reynolds explains why you should use a picture-in-picture style when giving presentations in Zoom. As you might expect, he uses great visuals to convey those points. After explaining why you should use a PIP style, he explains how you can create a PIP effect without using any external or third-party tools. 

After watching the video above, you might have questions about how to use slides in Zoom to create a PIP effect. Fortunately, Garr Reynolds has you covered there with another tutorial video titled How to Use Slides as Virtual Background in Zoom.

Applications for Education

It's probably worth noting that the methods Garr Reynolds presented in these videos might be a little cumbersome for daily instruction. As he points out in the video above, it's hard to use the drawing tool while using these methods. That said, these methods could be great to put to use for professional development presentations and presentations to school boards or other stake-holder groups. 

3 Good Books and Videos About Crafting Stories and Presentations

Last month's most popular post was 6 Alternatives to PowerPoint and Keynote. A lot of times when we think about putting together presentations we think about the slides first. But a good presentation starts with a good story and starts before we create our first slides. Over the years I've watched lots of videos and read even more articles about presentation and story design. Watch a Guy Kawasaki presentation if you want to see some of the best presentation methods in action, I'm partial to this one about his book Enchantment. Over the years three books have influenced much of what goes into my presentations, here they are in reverse chronological order.

Last fall Lee Lefever, the founder of Common Craft, published The Art of Explanation. I recorded a short interview with Lee and you can watch it below. One of my big take-aways from the book was the idea of avoiding "the curse of knowledge." The curse of knowledge is basically knowing so much about a topic that you forget that what you take for granted is not as easily understood by non-experts. Explaining things is something that we do every day in our classrooms and I know that I'm guilty of sometimes suffering from the curse of knowledge.


Dan Roam's Unfolding the Napkin is the workbook companion to his Back of the Napkin series of books. Even if you don't read his other books, the workbook is still very useful as it will walk you through the process of thinking about stories and telling those stories in a clear manner. The concept is that if you can break a big concept into small sketches, you can explain it. You can get a sense of what Unfolding the Napkin is about by watching the ten minute video below.


When the time comes to craft your slides and practice your presentation, Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds is the place to turn to for advice. Get a sample of what Presentation Zen is about by watching the nine minute video below.

365 Projects - Now I Get It, Building a Media Library

Ken explains font types

I've seen people doing all kinds of 365 Projects for years now. Some have been focused on taking one picture per day, some have been about creating or capturing sounds, and others have been focused on video. I never really "got" the appeal of these projects until Friday morning when I sat in on Ken Shelton's presentation about presentation design. Ken made a good case for committing to a 365 Project. It's a good way to build up a library of media that you can use in your own presentations.

Applications for Education
I've always told people that the best way to avoid any Copyright issues is to use your own media in presentations. One challenge with that if you're on a tight time schedule, you might not be able to create all the media you need. Another challenge is the weather and seasons. As Ken said in his presentation, "if you want a picture of rain, you have to go out in the rain." By committing to a 365 Project you can build a library of your media that you and or your students can use for creating presentations.

For more advice on designing and delivering presentations, watch these three videos from Guy Kawasaki and Garr Reynolds.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going out to take a few pictures.