Customer Reviews

Presenting With Pizzazz

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It was an easy book for me to read in few days and get a lot of wonderful easy to use ideas. I recomend this book to anyone who does presentations to a group of people.

This book makes involving students easy, quick, and fun. It makes sense to teach this way. I wish more teachers for both kids and adults would use these ideas.

Almost every book on presentation commanded at least a few hundred pages of text, so you could imagine my sceptism when I bought this book.

I am glad to say that I have not regretted this purchase. :)

You realise that this book is a no-nonsense, straight to the point tip book, the moment you flip to the content page. The elaborations are concise and punchy. You don't have to mull through numerous pages of boring academia but you get very useful tips. Sharon Bowman is quite obviously an old hand at training.

What I also loved were the punchy and witty little words of wisdom that Sharon Bowman boxed up in various parts of the book. It made lots of common sense when you read them, and of course, served to tickle your funny bones.

My only reservation about this book is that while the tips are great, its suggested games/pair shares do not seem very useful for most situations - to some extent, these pair shares can seem rather common and boring.

Nevertheless, I would take this with a pinch of salt, and rather use these suggested games/pair shares not as the hard and fast model answers, nor as templates, but more as suggested examples. Ultimately any game can become boring and mundane if too many people keep repeating it in different trainings. Your job as a trainer is to make sure this doesn't happen, and that creativitiy is always maintained.

The first time I read Presenting With Pizzazz, I applied two ideas to a Negotiation Skills workshop. I plan to go back and use additional ideas for my other sessions. This has a wealth of unique ideas for active learning!

The book offers some sound concepts for trainers. Some of the activities are a bit out there and might not go over well in corporate training.

This is one of the best books I've read on presentation tips. Sensible, easy to follow, great layout that makes reviewing the highlights the hour before giving a talk easy!

"Pizzazz" isn't about the presenter. And it's not about "the show," that is, entertaining audiences with a snazzy presentation where all the attention focused on the presenter. It's about turning audiences of passive listeners into audiences of active learners - big difference. When a presenter involves his/her audience in the learning, then the presentation is filled with pizzazz. And, which is even better, learners can remember and use what they heard afterwards - something that doesn't happen when the audience is simply listening to the presenter, no matter how entertaining the presenter may be.

While not all books are for everyone, there are many folks who have learned a great deal from this book (as evidenced by emails I receive and book sales - over 20,000 copies to date). These people are using what they have learned in effective ways to add lots of pizzazz to their presentations.

Carry on! Sharon Bowman

I was very disappointed with this book. I am a speaker and this book will not help me much. The basic message of the book: the audience must be involved so it learns. No kidding!?
This book was "presenting with pizazz" and NOT "tricks to become a better trainer"!!! The title is completely misleading, since I didn't learn how to add any creativity, showbiz or "pizazz" to my presentations!
In fact, being known for my surprising presentations, I will really think about writing this book myself, as it was meant to be.
I do not recommend this book since it contains only minimal content.