Week 3, Presentations Strategies, 14-08-2007

Week three lecture, was all about oral presentations and how to affectively present one. An oral presentation is all about how it is presented and keeping the audience attention so that they can retain the information that was said to them. The structure of the presentation is bit like writing an essay. It should have an introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction of the presentation should be the attention getter and like Justin Freeman says create curiosity and also don’t use humour if your not a humours person. Also make sure the introduction has a clear thesis so the viewers have a clear idea of what is going to be said in the speech. The main points of the body are that it should take one third of the whole speech. Making sure between each paragraph that it flows through amongst each other. Also making sure that there are references to back up the ideas so it doesn’t sound like a story. The conclusion is all about re-asserting the thesis. This is to remind the audience what the speech was about.

The tutorial task was to use PowerPoint and do a presentation on you. Such things as animations had to be used, colour etc to enhance it and be creative. It had to consist a minimum of six slides, which includes introduction, body and conclusion. The end result looked like this:

By l_mason at 2007-09-03

By l_mason at 2007-09-03
By l_mason at 2007-09-03

By l_mason at 2007-09-03
By l_mason at 2007-09-03

Also had to do five tips for a speech:

By l_mason at 2007-09-03

I’m like most other people that do not like to do presentations. I hate the fact of standing in front of class and doing a presentation. By using the information that Justin has given out I am more confident in how I m going to do it. In the past I did not mind doing a presentation but at university it is in front of a group of people that I have never meet before so be interesting in how Ill go. All I have to remember is that I think is most important is to be ready before the presentation, which I believe will go a long way into presenting a well clear speech.

What I also found interesting from the lecture is the use of such things as PowerPoint. Through my high school education, I have only used PowerPoint once, which was in year 12. From this experience I never really had the grasp of how to use PowerPoint to enhance the presentation. The main point about using PowerPoint is the kiss principle should be implemented. The presentation should not have to many animations through it and also as stated by Justin that the less you use the more better it becomes. The background should be subtle and also avoid using sounds. These are all very helpful hints in using PowerPoint. As I said before I rarely used PowerPoint in high school and never really show how to really use it.

I am confident that I can structure a presentation well enough so that the audience has a good understanding of what the presentation is about. I have to make sure I prepare for the presentation the day before and be all organised. I should also make more that I have the audience attention to have a well-presented speech.

The first reading is all about oral presentations by Mark Hill. In this he gives advice on how to give a good presentation. He also lists the many different speeches that are used in. In the reading it is about developing a good speech and Mark Hill gives good hints in doing so. Also under the heading “how to give a bad talk” gives many reason why people go wrong, namely the lazy ones. These tips can be used to create a good helpful speech.