The Presentation and the Pauper

The presentations were overall well informative and interesting, I thought. One that particularly stood out to me was Kim Ferrari's. Her presentation on Dante I thought was well researched and appeared very scholarly with the pictures and the summaries that created a story like delivery. It was also interesting to hear about the parallels between Dante's works and his life, and why he chose to be lead by such interesting characters through heaven and hell. Another presentation that I thought was interesting was Kaileigh Byrne's presentation. It was interesting learning about the octopus and the introductory slide with the octopus moving along with sound effects was both unique and creative and brought a sense of intrigue to the start of the presentation. The selection of graphics put into the presentation were also very well chosen and went along well with what she was trying to say about the such a magnificent creature. Both these presentations were well delivered and engaged the audience well.

PowerPoint: A Gift and a Curse

The articles describe fallacies in PowerPoint that I believe are well deserved. Throughout my high school and college career I have come across instructors who have created rather monotonous presentations. But, reading through the articles I noticed that the majority of them seem to touch and the fact that the templates and pictures that Microsoft PowerPoint has set up for their users are not really of the best caliber. The animations and sounds are easy to get carried away with. Also I have noticed that during presentations in class if there is a lot of text on the slide it is almost a compulsion for me to copy down everything on the slide, and completely disregard the speaker. That is why I agree with the fact that the less that is put on the slide will provoke the audience to adhere to exactly what you are saying because the slide is just abstract data and phrases.
But I would have to say one of the most annoying things that can occur during a presentation, that I ultimately and completely despise, is slide reading. Turning your back away from the audience to read a slide both breaks the verbal connection you have established with your audience, and also devalues your intellectual capacity to communicate coherently the subject from which you are presenting. As for the general rules that I like to use when using a PowerPoint presentation, they are usually as follows:

1: Pick a theme that fits well with the subject that you are presenting on; set the mood for the information that the audience is about to here.

2: Pictures speak louder that words. I like to throw a few pictures up on a slide so that they can complement my speech, because in describing a picture or a chart you can often get more out of your information than just listing facts on a slide.

3: Looking at the audience is imperative because it can engage them more in what you are presenting. Move around and become more animated so that the audience feels like what you are saying is generally important. If you do so your audience is less likely to fall into a daze and more likely to get more out of what you are saying. Just standing there and dictating monotone information is not enjoyable for anyone, leastwise yourself.

4: The animations and sound effects aspect of the presentations I often find can be distracting and sometimes unprofessional. Simple and tasteful animation is all right, but sometimes it can get in the way of what you are saying. I also find it effective to not have all the information appear on a slide, so that way the listeners have to listen to what you are saying before you proceed to the next point, whereas if it is all up there at once they might read it before you get to it and think that they have covered the important things without the adequate explanation to go along with the text. I hardly use the sounds effects, but sometimes I use music and little snips of songs to kick things up a notch.

5: Engineer each slide to be unique but correlating with the same theme of the entire presentation. One thing is to make sure that you to not always use the same layout, so that way the slides have some variation so the audience is not always looking at the same arrangement all the time. Another thing is to make sure that the font color you use is easily legible, because there is really nothing more annoying than a slide with light yellow writing on a white background that is nearly impossible to see.

One more side note is to practice the presentation. Nothing illustrates the presenters unpreparedness like a comment to the effect that he was unaware that one slide came next and as such now has to switch gears and break the natural rhythm of the presentation. Beyond that there is nothing that is a really horrible presentation or a really good presentation. The trick is to get a presentation that has more good elements than bad, because nothing is perfect.

Excel: The One and Only

Excel is an interesting program, and before learning about it in class I really did not use it at all or have any real knowledge as to how to use it correctly. The major thing that I learned was all of the formulas and functions that are used. The way that a vast amount of data can be analyzed will prove immensely helpful with my academic field. Being a Geology major, one usually works with long ranges of data and the majority of data collected tends to be of a highly quantitative nature. With Excel, it will be possible for me to now analyze data from new angles and derive more useful trends and interesting correlations. Also with the IF function I would be able to see which point meet a certain criterion based on a prescribed value versus mulling through the entire range of data by hand and looking for the desired representation. In the future I might also use it for financial reasons, either to use it for taxes or for keeping track of my account based on my acquired knowledge of this surprisingly useful program.

The Center of Learning Technology (a.k.a. The Basement)

It is no real secret why many people, like me, have never really taken advantage or used the CLT: it is effectively tucked away in the dubious final floor of Coates Library. This is counter intuitive because it is a literal treasure trove of electronic capability. I have been by the CLT many times in search of some obscure journal, and gazed at the large screens and Mac desktops, yet did not realize that you could also check out cameras, video cameras and sound recorders, edit photos and films for projects, and mix music and create CD's with no charge. The most interesting I thought was the fact that you could check out sound recorders, because I do a fair amount of instrumental things, and it would be fabulous if I could record and create audio files.
I have a class this semester called Planetary geology and it would be great if I could create some type of presentation using some kind of software in the CLT. Later in the year I will also have a project to do on a French Author, and with the technology available at CLT, it could be much better using the workstations and the software to create a rather unique and interesting presentation. It is a great resource that is extremely underestimated.