Week #7 - Presentations

This week, we learned about what makes a good presentation from Garr Reynolds and Chris Anderson. Knowing how to present an effective presentation is very important skill for everyone to know how to do, because there are many opportunities to make presentations, especially in academics and in the workplace.  Before listening to Garr Reynolds and reading his and Anderson's take on what makes a good presentation, I felt like I knew many of the basics that they mentioned...  Basic things like not using too many words on a slide when making a presentation with Powerpoint, and not reading word for word exactly what you are writing on your Powerpoint presentation.  How ever, there were some effective tips that I learned that are very helpful.  A good point that Reynolds presented was that it is a lot easier to keep your audience engaged when you make your presentation into a story.  I know many times that presentations can get boring and it is hard to keep people focused on the topic that you are presenting about, so telling a story to present my point will be something that I will be trying to do in the future.

I found what Anderson had to say was more informational and helpful in making my presentation skills better. I thought that his tips were great additions to the basic skills that Reynolds was providing about telling a story to make an effective presentation.

"We all know that humans are wired to listen to stories, and metaphors abound for the narrative structures that work best to engage people. When I think about compelling presentations, I think about taking an audience on a journey. If you frame the talk as such, the biggest decisions are figuring out where to start and end." - Chris Anderson.

Another important skill that Anderson taught me, was how to make effective contact in a presentation.  I always knew eye contact was important, but I never really knew how to do it without feeling awkward and weird.  Anderson finally solved that problem for me.

"Perhaps the most important physical act onstage is making eye contact. Find five or six friendly-looking people in different parts of the audience and look them in the eye as you speak. Think of them as friends you have not seen in a year, whom you are bringing up to date on your work." - Chris Anderson

This week we were asked to participate in a class presentation.  I had never participated in a class wide presentation like this and I thought it was very cool to see how easy it was to collaborate with Google Presentation.  

Here is my slide from the Class Presentation.

Week 7 - Collaborative Slide Show

Week #6

This week, we learned about being creative and why it is important.

In this week's TED video, Sir Ken Robinson discussed the importance of being creative and how our educational system is failing us by not encouraging creativity.  I thought everything that he had to say was very important and that he was actually very funny while saying it.  Our future and our education are two things that go hand in hand, Sir Ken really shed some light on that idea.  His idea that the education system needs to be reformed so that creativity is encouraged instead teaching every student to be exactly the same is a discussion that more people should be talking about.

One of the things that really caught my attention when he was speaking was the idea that with so many people getting college degrees today, it is dropping the value of having a college degree when you are trying to be competitive when getting a job.  What I find troubling about that, is while our college degrees are becoming less valuable to us, the cost of going to college has risen dramatically over the years.  I see a big problem there.

Another thing that caught my attention was when he was speaking about "the dancer" and how just because she was not doing well in the "traditional" subjects, didn't mean she wasn't great in something else... which in fact, came to be dancing, where she excelled and had a very successful career. Sir Ken said, "If she was confronted with her problem learning "traditional" subjects today, they would have said she had ADHD and told her to quit acting out..." This type of conformist way of education lacks creativity and it is bad for our future.

 Everyone has there own way of learning and a talent that separates them from the rest.  Our education system needs to utilize those talents and gifts instead of rewarding curriculums that make everyone the same.

This week we also learned about how photographs can be used to tell a story.  Photographs are an effective and creative way to tell a story, because when it is done right, the story comes to life without having to read any words.  The Big Picture website was a great example of how photographs can be used to tell a story about a subject.  In the Harvest 2013 photo story, I thought it was cool how they showed pictures from all over the world doing the same thing... Harvesting their crops and showing what they do in the process.  It is something that every place in the world has in common and it was neat to see in pictures.

The Photo Slideshow Story that I put together was one of a family dinner that I had with my girlfriend's family in Quebec.  It starts with the dinner being made and it ends with the popular Canadian pastime, a hockey game. It is posted in a separate blog post.  

Photo Slideshow Story

Week #5

Cloud Storage is a very useful tool for anyone who uses a computer.  It allows people to save and edit files from anywhere in the world with any device.  This is a such a great feature, because it is a lot more effective and efficient when it comes to productivity and collaboration than the hard disk and network storage that most people are used to.  The only issue that I have been thinking about with cloud storage is privacy.  I can see that there may be potential for files being seen or altered that you may not want other people to have access to, so that can be a big problem.  I think for now and in the near future, using cloud storage will be great for group work and things that I absolutely want access to from any place or device, but I will be thinking twice about putting things that I want to keep private of confidential onto a cloud storage service.

For Google+ Photos and Youtube, I see them as great ways to store and share photos and videos.  I was able to share an album from Google+ Photos to our G+ CCV Multimedia Applications Community.  The album that I decided to share was "My Winter Job", so that everyone can see what it is like making snow at Jay Peak.

Link to: My Winter Job Album

 I was also able to link my YouTube Channel to our G+ Community page.  Something that I learned in this assignment that I never knew before was that you can create your own channel for sharing videos that not only you make, but other videos that are already on YouTube as well.  I always knew that you could view videos and post videos on YouTube, but I never knew you could create a channel where you can share videos that you made and other videos that you like, all in the same place.  I look forward to adding videos to my channel in the future.

Link to: My YouTube Channel