by John McCarthy, Ed.S. – Twitter: @JMcCarthyEdS

Much of my work depends on public speaking. It takes on many forms including conducting workshops, keynotes, teaching students, and presenting at meetings for school boards and other stakeholders. We all know that the skills for public speaking are NOT finite. There is a continuous honing and crafting. Steve Jobs, a former CEO of Apple, remains a standard for gifted presentations even after he died. Much has been written about Steve Jobs’ presentation skills. The most important lesson from his is preparation, preparation, preparation. Another standard for amazing presentations are TedTalks. What follows are four resources that can support our continuous skill development for public speaking, and ideas to use to teach and inspire students to elevate their presentation game.

• How to Give a Great TedTalk
  Burt Helm offers insights for giving a great TedTalk that is both specific, doable, and affirmational. Anyone can do, and should do, what he suggests–not just for TedTalks. His ideas are a good frame for researching other links on good presentations, including the ones that follow here.

• The 7 Steps to Delivering a Mind-Blowing Ted Talk by Sam Horn
  Sam offers concise ideas on 7 steps for preparing a dynamic presentation. The points made go to the heart of what makes a presentation engaging and connected to an audience. There are a couple TedTalk videos used as exemplars.

• The Top 5 TedTalks on how to give a great Ted Talk
  Five videos anchor the 5 points made about presentations. The videos are annotated for what they demonstrate. The author leaves some of the connecting of dots for dynamic presentations up to the reader to figure out.

• Speaking at Ted
  Of course, TedTalk offers it’s own guide for applying to speak at one of their venues and what goes into a TedTalk.
  Before Public Speaking is a playlist of TedTalks on various public speaking topics.

Playlist of Masters in Action and Presentations to Learn from