Reflection on Storytelling

I'm really glad that we watched the video clip in class about storytelling. Prior to class, I skimmed through the author's book on bad presentations. The info from the book was helpful but for me the video was more impactful and helped me grasp the author's argument about the power of storytelling. I liked the example the author highlighted in the video involving the wordy, detailed PowerPoint presentation. It's definitely something that I could relate to from having personally designed a few of my own wordy presentations and from viewing others as an audience member. But what I really found helpful was how the author framed presentations around the idea of "storytelling". Everyone has a story. Either you are listening to someone's story, retelling a story, or telling your own story. For instance, in the Native American culture storytelling is part of the traditional knowledge of sharing information orally and passing it on from one generation to another. As the video demonstrated a lot of information can be conveyed from oral communication.

I also liked how the physical activity group applied some of the storytelling tips into their presentation. The cliché that "a picture is worth a thousand words" is so true when composing a PowerPoint slide. I've personally struggled with making short and concise presentations in the past, even recently with my 663 article presentation. I find that I tend to get overwhelmed with trying to convey lots of information to others and unfortunately I rely on slides with a lot of textual informational. But in the future, I hope to try and apply some of the storytelling skills that I learned about from the video.