Ohio’s annual educational technology conference, known as OETC, took place February 12-14, 2019, in Columbus.  This year, educators from all over Ohio took part in a series of pre-keynote presentations called “FREd Talks”.  “FREd” stands for Finding Real Education, and is the brainchild of Ohio educator, Toby Fischer.

FREd Talks have much the same format as an Ignite talk, where a prepared set of 20 slides is set to auto-advance every 15 seconds.  Five minutes.  No problem, right?

I was honored to share the stage with two other long-time friends in education to deliver a FREd Talk before Wednesday’s keynote panel discussion of current and emerging applications for artificial intelligence.  Marcia Kish, Ryan Collins, and I are veterans to the FREd scene, having taken part in previous FREd Talks at past OETCs when it was a separate session.  Video of each of the FREd Talks is coming soon.  My talk was a five-minute version of “Five Rules of Design Thinking to Reach All Students”, condensing my workshop materials from designingeducation.org.

Can you deliver your message in five minutes?  The process of preparing for a FREd Talk is not a simple one.  I find it to be much more difficult than preparing for, say, a 45-minute or 60-minute presentation.  There is no time for an ad lib, no time for wandering off on tangential thoughts.

Preparing your 20 slides and rehearsing your five-minute presentation is a great idea, even if you don’t have an invitation to speak somewhere… yet!  What would your message be, if you only had five minutes?