In week 3’s lecture, students were informed of different ways to give an effective oral presentation. It was made clear that it was very important to try and seem as confident as possible so as to let the audience think you are an expert in what your presentation is about. Students were also given an idea of what to include in slides and in what order to deliver them to the audience. A useful tip that was given is to remember who your audience is. They are not children, but they will lose interest in your presentation if you let them. To prevent them from losing interest, it was indicated that you must be resourceful. For example, if you have a sense of humor and are naturally funny, use it. If you aren’t, however, it’s best to try not to include humor as you may end up looking quite the fool.

In the workshop this week, students were firstly to create a Top Five list of strategies to give a good oral presentation. To do this, we were to refer to the lecture slides/notes for this week as well as the web site http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/conference-talk.html (found on Blackboard).
Below is my Top Five list:

1. Make sure your audience understands what you are talking about. Don’t dumb it down too much, but remember that if your audience gets confused, they will lose concentration and will not go away from your presentation with anything useful.

2. Be interesting yourself rather than show it on your PowerPoint. Speak clearly and try not to speed through your talk. Allow time for you audience to process what you are saying as people are often interested most when they feel they get something. Remember to make eye contact. Don’t distract them with too many bright colours or animations on your PowerPoint presentation. Only include graphics and such if they support your presentation.

3. Try to use your PowerPoint presentation as an aid rather than the whole presentation. Only include the key points of what you are talking about. Do not include everything you are saying to the audience on the slides.

4. Make sure you practice your presentation so that it is within the time limit given. The more you practice, the more confident you will feel and appear as you will know you have a good understanding of what you are talking to your audience about. Try to practice in front of people (friends or family members) so when you get up in front of people in your final presentation, you don’t get too overwhelmed.

5. Make sure everything is in working order before hand. If you are going to include sound in your presentation for example, make sure it is going to work on the computer you are using. Be prepared in case something goes wrong (make back up hard copies of everything preferably on overheads).

In the second part of our workshop for week 3, students were required to create a PowerPoint of a biographical nature. We could make the subject on pretty much anything we wanted and could make it as showy as we wanted (to show we had an understanding of how to use the program). I chose to make my presentation on how much I dislike my cat. As required, I gave it 1 animation and some graphics. Although you cannot see them in the screenshots provided, I added animation to each object. My favourite animation would have to be the colour typewriter. To see the slides for my PowerPoint presentation, view the screenshots below (click for full view):






















The readings covered this week (the site http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/conference-talk.html on Blackboard) were pretty much reinforcing the main points of the lecture. I found the last part (How to Give a Bad Talk by David A. Patterson) really quite funny as well as informative on some things that hadn’t been touched on much in either the lecture or the first part of the reading. Information I found useful was to remember to use appropriate sized font. I also got the idea that preparation time is just as important as research time.

Week two’s lecture included different things you might do on a computer. Incorporated were Windows Explorer, MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Windows Explorer is (to my understanding) is basically something that helps you with file management. Among other things, you can easily rename files, copy and past them and move them.
MS Word is a program in which you can create documents for assignments (or anything else that needs to be written up). By simply clicked your mouse, you can make the document look very professional by using headers and footers, titles and sub titles and many more things.
MS Excel helps you create spreadsheets and charts rather easily. While my knowledge of it is very limited, I understand that you enter data, to which you can find out the sum, average etc. Using that data, you can also create a range of charts including (and not limited to) pie charts, scatter charts and bar charts.
MS PowerPoint allows you to create presentations that you can present to people. The use of animation and sound is allowed, but it has been made clear that you should only really use them to support your notes rather than decorate them. You don’t want the focus to be taken away from the point of the presentation.
Internet Explorer is but one of the browsers available to access the World Wide Web. Hyperlinks included in the browser (home, back page, refresh etc) make it simple to navigate your way.
Outlook Express is also but one of the programs you can use to send and receive emails. An alternative would be Thunderbird (through www.mozilla.org).
Adobe Acrobat Reader allows you to view PDF documents from the internet and such. You can either view these documents online through Acrobat or download them to your PC and view them from there.
Other common PC programs include audio and video players and photo editing programs.

In this week’s workshop, students were to complete tasks in both MS Word and MS Excel.
In the MS Word exercise, students had to copy and paste a section of text into a new document. That document was then to be altered by changing the typeface, margin and alignment, line spacing, creating headings (and keeping those headings with the text) and creating headers and footers. To complete these tasks, instructions were given on Blackboard in the document reading_Mod01-2-5.pdf. To see a screenshot of this part of the exercise completed, view the screenshot below (click for full image):


Students were then to copy and paste a small group of references into the same document and alphabetize them. A list of titles was then to be copied and pasted into the document and made into a table of contents by creating dot leaders for them. An image was then to be inserted underneath the table of contents. Again, instructions on how to complete these tasks were listed in the document on Blackboard. To see a screenshot of this part of the exercise completed, view the screenshot below (click to see full image):


In the MS Excel exercise, students were to firstly complete a table according to the requirements in the document Excel Exercises.doc.pdf found on Blackboard. Students were to adjust column widths and row heights, the table border, alignment of the cells, and some of the cell’s colours. Along the top of the table, cells B1 – H1 were to be labeled with week days (Monday – Sunday). Cell I1 was to be labeled Total and J1 Average. Cells A1 – A11 were to be labeled Activity, Traveling, Lectures, Tutorials, Lib/Study, Eating, Social, Sleeping, Other, Exercise and Total. Students were then to fill in how much time per day they spent doing each activity. Once that was finished, they were to use a Formula that calculated the Sum for each activity in the column following the cell titled Total (cell A11) to make sure each day included the full 24 hours. The summing rule was then to be applied to the row following the cell titled Total (cell I1). Once students had completed that, there was to be a Formula that calculated the Average for each activity in the row following the cell titled Average. For a screenshot of this completed activity, view the screenshot below (click to see full image):


Using the information gathered in this table (the total for each activity), students were to create two charts to present the findings: a pie chart and a column chart. To see a screenshot of these two charts, view the screenshot below (click to see full image):


I should take this time to say that having never used MS Excel properly until this workshop, I found the site http://www.baycongroup.com/excel.htm (provided on Blackboard) very helpful.

The first reading on Blackboard was titled Using MS Word for APA Tasks. This document covered all the different things you can do to a document to make it look professional. This included the steps we took to alter the text in our MS Word workshop as well as other varied things (hyperlinks, grammar check etc.) you can use.
The second reading on Blackboard was titled Graphic File Formats. Upon reading this, students were educated on what file format was the best one to use for certain graphics. Also included was what certain file formats would do (e.g. .gif’s could be a still image or an animation).