When us Sci/Tech Presentations teachers get together to carouse, we get into disagreements about the importance of demonstrative presentations and whether or not they’re worth including in syllabi. I continue to teach them simply because they were the most common type of presentation I did when I was in industry. If I had to do them all the time, then chances are pretty decent that my students will too.

I’m a-gonna use this Rancho Gordo video the next time I teach how-to presentations, I think. Since the music completely obscures Steve’s verbal delivery, it’ll be an interesting way to talk about how much and what sort of instruction is actually needed and, therefore, what decent audience analysis can accomplish.

I've come to rely pretty heavily on cooking shows for teaching how-to's, since they so completely fit the bill: scientific, technical, and demonstrative, plus it’s usually quite easy for students to figure out why the demos are successful or failures. (Or both at the same time, in the case of the Martha Stewart & Nathan Lane videos below.) I also recently dug up a couple of old Frugal Gourmet VHSs at a library sale. One of them features some truly horrific 80s French cooking, which ought to be good for something. Here’s a few others I’ve used before:

Successful:
Emeril makes Crab Remick
How to wheelie a motorcycle (not cooking-related, but still successful)

Bizarre:
Rachel Ray opens jars
Nathan Lane on the Martha Stewart Show, part 1 and part 2