What are some fun activities for cognitive development?

Fun activities to develop public presentation skills

• Organising a fun, casual workshop to help people develop better public presentation skills. Ideas for activities and games? I’m part of a large group that meets monthly for 20x20 presentations based on the Pecha Kucha format (where the presenter talks along to 20 slides that change automatically every 20 seconds) – though our presentations aren’t just design-based, absolutely any topic is fair game as long as it’s not a sales pitch or blatant personal promotion. It’s extremely popular and several people have said they would love to present but are completely inexperienced and unsure about their presentation skills, so we’ve decided to run a workshop to give people the chance to learn basic skills and have the opportunity to practice in front of a smaller, less generally inebriated crowd. I think the plan is to start with basic presentation dos and don’ts along with example clips and to end with some short random slide challenges (where the participants freestyle a presentation based on slides he or she has never seen before) but in between I’d like to do some improv-style activities and maybe some physical and verbal games to loosen everyone up and get them laughing and having fun. I’ve googled ‘improv activities’ and there are tons out there, hopefully you will help me narrow them down. There will be about 10-15 people participating.

• Answer:

  I don't know if you have a budget or not, but I was dragged kicking and screaming to a Laughter presentation once,and ended up having a great time. I don't know what they charge, but it loosened people up mentally and physically in about 15 minutes.