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.