<img src="http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b119/whitkit/WEEK3.jpg">

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.