by Gwen Bortner | Presenting
Bond…. James Bond. It is an iconic statement famous throughout the English speaking world and probably much of the rest of the planet. But what can James Bond teach us about presenting?
[featured-image single-newwindow=”false” id=”130914-All6JamesBonds” alt=”50 Years of Bond”]Image via GeekDad[/featured-image]
Well, quite a lot actually. To date there are 6 actors who have played James Bond unless you also include the spoof version of Casino Royale, where James Bond is played by actor David Niven. Whether you are a fan of Sean Connery, Daniel Craig, or any of the others in between, each Bond actor has something to teach us if we examine them carefully.
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by Gwen Bortner | Abundance
[featured-image single-newwindow=”false” id=”130904-PinkyBrain” alt=”Pinky and the Brain”]Image via Flickr by JD Hancock[/featured-image]
Even though I don’t have kids, that does not stop me from watching (and thoroughly enjoying) lots of cartoons. One of my favorites in the mid to late 90’s was Pinky and the Brain by Warner Bros. The premise of the show is that two genetically altered lab mice share a cage (and are friends). Each episode began with the following dialogue sequence:
Pinky: “Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”
Brain: “The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world!”
And thus the story began!
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by Gwen Bortner | Training & Instruction
Adult educators have a unique challenge in working with their students. In some cases they have forgotten how to learn and in other scenarios they have forgotten how to behave! But one rotten apple doesn’t need to ruin the whole bunch.
Image via Flickr by Michael Bentley
In my class, How to Teach It, one of the most common questions I get is how to deal with difficult students. For most of us, difficult students are not common, but their rarity makes them much more challenging as we are often caught unprepared, without a plan of action. In this 3-part series we will look at categories of challenging students, “defensive” techniques to minimize occurrences and suggestions for managing them when they inevitably do show up in class.
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by Gwen Bortner | Presenting
[featured-image single-newwindow=”false” id=”130801-Theater” alt=”Auditorium”]Image via Flickr by Bahman Farzad[/featured-image]
Let me start by saying that I have never been in a play or been part of a theater production; however, I have a lot of theater friends and have attended theater performances from local community theater to Broadway productions. So although I haven’t been on stage, I have learned a great deal from being in the audience, listening to the actors debrief and just being generally observant. What I have come to realize is that speaking and acting have a great number of commonalities, and a good speaker can learn a a few lessons in speaking from their actor cousins.
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