Dubai GITEX Day 1 2010: What's up with staring at hairlines?

I have just returned from the GITEX Expo in Dubai. It is massive expo featuring major and minor IT players. Everyone from Oracle to the Taiwanese Trade Commission is there. I normally got over a two day period to have enough time to talk to everyone and see new solutions. Although most of the displays focused on corporate IT, I did see 20-30 vendors demonstrating classroom technology.

What was appalling to me was that everyone was trying to create some type of cheaper or varied solution for projecting and image and then interacting with it on a wall or board. Similar to SMART Technologies. Just a few meters from most of these vendors were companies such as WACOM and GENIUS which have very cool wireless accessories to make any classroom flexible. Simple additions that free the teacher/presenter from the confines of a board, and allow them to work around the room. In every case, the teacher/presenter spends most of their time with their back to their audience.

Not only is the audience looking at the back of someone's head while they are literally speaking toward the wall, the teacher/presenter is going through menus and trying to do and redo things on the board with a bunch of tools and "toys". The audience probably can describe the hairline of the teacher/presenter better than the content of the presentation.

If we look at best practice strategies for HUMAN COMMUNICATION and PUBLIC SPEAKING, we find that successful speakers and good instructors:

* Make eye contact
* Change their tone and inflection and project their voices clearly
* Use hand motions and other non-verbal cues
* Use presentation media as a guide not a distraction
* When applicable allow the audience to participate in the creation or manipulation of media
* Connect on an emotional level to help ingrain the message into the minds of the audience

I could go on and on. Basically making the focus of the classroom or presentation the back of someone's head is a mistake. We are losing the discipline of good public speaking, by demanding technology that separates us from our audiences. It really needs to stop before we forget how to stand-up and create a presentation, when all we have is an idea.