a) What are the most valuable things you learned about the process of preparing and delivering presentations? (2 or more)
For both the process of preparing and delivering, there are 2 things I learned that I thought were valuable for me.
When I am preparing, I learned that rehersals are essential for getting ready for a presentation. Before I took this course, I never did any rehersals because I always finished preparing just before the presentation date; which is what happened in Presentation 1 and 2. By doing rehersals, I was able to gain confidence in myself as I was addressing the message to the audience because I had the outline of the contents in my mind. It was a feeling I had hardly experienced in presentations. So I figured rehersals are fundamentals in presentations. The second thing I thought was valuable was asking people for suggestions about the contents in the presentation. When I did presentations, I always thought of what to say by myself and did not ask other people. But for this presentation, with the fact that it was a group presentation, my group members gave me advice and suggestions for my script. It improved my script a lot and I realized how the presentation can become a lot better with other people's opinions. From this, I also was able to give advice to the group members too. As a result, we were able to make a great presentation by helping each other. What I also learned from this is that I can use this method on single presentations too. Even though I am alone, I have the opportunity to ask for advice and feedbacks to strengthen my presentation and I am going to take advantage of that.
For the process of delivering, I learned that being confident is prominent in addressing the message. After Marc had introduced the TED website, (as well as the video of Steve Jobs and also the video of an example of a bad presentation by an American college student) I watched many presenters to see if I can see any common techniques they used. As a result, I came up with the fact that the good presenters all had confidence in themselves. For example, like Brian Greene from TED, (he is an expert in his field so it is pretty obvious that he has confidence but anyways) he does not use a script and looks completely confident in his self; that is why I thought his presentation was so interesting even though I had little knowledge about his topic. However unlike Greene, Steve Jobs uses a script and looks at it most of the time in his speech. But you can see that his words are powerful and is successfully delivering the message to the audience. I figured that this is from confidence; and in my future presentations, I want to say to myself as I am delivering the speech-Have confidence in yourself. The second thing I learned is to think about what I am going to say next as I present the material. Marc mentioned this point to the class in one of the last classes and it left a deep impression on me. As I said before, I did not have the outline of the topic so I had to read the script throughout the presentation. So if I have the outline in my head, I would be able to deliver my message smoothly without studdering. Moreover, I realized that this point is connected to having confidence in yourself. By remembering the outline of the presentation, I will be able to gain confindence in myself because there is no need to worry about getting stuck at what you want to say next; therefore I will be able to address the message with power and successfully deliver the message.
From now on, I am going to keep these four valuable points in my mind to make a powerful presentation.
b) In what presentation skill areas do you feel you have made progress or improved your awareness? (2 or more)
After finishing this course, I took time to think about my presentation skills (including slides, body language, and contents) before and after this AEP course. From my own observation, I think I have made progress in mainly 3 things.
The first improvement was my introduction skills. My favorite part of presentations had been the introduction even before I took this course. I had always been trying to think of a catchy introduction to get the audience's attention. Even though I did not mention this in my goals, it was something wanted to improve throughout the course. Since I (and also everyone else I think) think that the introduction is the part where you get nervous the most, I wanted to stay calm and cleary state my "catchy" introduction; which I was struggling to do before. But I was able to accomplish this in my last presentation from experience and practice in the AEP course. In addition, with Marc's tip on introduction (about including the outline and purpose of the presentation), my introduction improved even more!!
The second improvement was my body language. In my first presentation, I kept looking at the screen, moving my legs and arms, and smiling which was very distracting. Therefore, I could not use eye contact and hand gestures to successfully deliver my message. But by the last presentation, I was able to keep still and not even look at the screen and script as much as before. This enabled me to emphasize my points and keep the audience concentrated on my presentation without being disturbed by my unneccessary body languages.
The third improvement was I was able to prepare on time with enough time for rehersal and practice. Everytime I was assigned a presentation, I finished preparing the day before so I could not practice; and because of that, there was no room for emphasis. However, as for my last presentation, with the help of my group members, I finished on time to memorize the outline and practice the presentation to gain confidence in myself.
Therefore, in my opinion, I especially improved in these three points; I will be aware of these valuable points in the future and make sure I will improve even more as I experience more and more presentations.
c) What points do you want to improve further in your future presentations? How can you improve those? (2 or more)
Well, I would want to improve everything!!!
But if I were to choose, I would like to further improve these three points in my future presentations: Introduction and conclusion, preparation time, and skills on how to speak effectively.
As I have been saying, the introduction, and also the conclusion as well are the most essential part in the presentation. The introduction is needed to catch attention and the conclusion is needed to emphasize your main points in the end to leave an impression for the audience. Therefore, I feel I need to further improve these to make my presentation stronger and powerful. To do this, I need to practice alot beforehand to make sure the two points are easy to understand and powerful enough to leave impression.
Next, preparation time. Even though I have been saying alot of things,none of these would be possible without preparation. My preparation time has drastically changed after taking the AEP course. However, I feel it is still inadequate. More practice and more preparation time=a better presentation. To do this, it is VERY VERY important to start as early as possible. Hence, I will start preparing eariler for improvement.
Finally, I would want to further improve my speaking skills. Even if I prepared well, it would be meaningless if I could not successfully deliver the message; this is where speaking skills come in. Although I still do not completely know why, I think that Brian Greene is a spetacular speaker with a lot of power. To be like him, I will need to discover the secrets and the methods used by great speakers by watching different speakers while are doing their presentations. So I would like to keep watching TED and other websites to learn how to be a GREAT SPEAKER.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Presentation #3
"Unite for Children, Unite Against AIDS"
a) The process of preparation and rehearsal
Group: I think the group did fairly well regarding the process of preparation and rehersal. We met a few times to organize our presentation and make sure it was ready to go. For example, we made the slides and suggested each other to see if it was effective or how it can be improved. Also, we made sure we all knew what parts to say in the presentation to keep the flow going smoothly;which is what we did in our rehersal. We went through our presentation about three times beforehand but I thought it was not enough to have confidence in myself.
Myself: Overall I thought I did well compared to the 1st and 2nd Presentation. This is maybe because I prepared faster than the other presentation; Although I started few days before... I was thinking about the topic but I could not think of anything interesting to say. I made my script right before the final, so I could not memorize all the contents I wrote; so I decided to forget about the script and speak in my own words as the presentation goes. As a result, I did not read the script much and was able to deliver the message more than if I were to read the script. Since I did not have much rehersal time on my own, the rehersal we did as a group was very important for me. So I was glad we were able to do a few rehersals before the final. (but as I said in thepart above, the preparation and rehersal time was inadequate for me; although I was lot better than doing nothing)
b) The effectiveness of the introduction
Group and myself: Since I was the one doing the Introduction, I would like to reflect on my performance. After I watched the video, I thought I was able to successfully catch the audience's attention with the pause and low toned voice. In the feedback after the presentation, Sho and Matt also mentioned that I did well in my introduction. But my team mates and also my feedback partner mentioned that my introduction was maybe too long and I spoke too slow; so those are some points to keep an eye on in future presentation.
c) The persuasiveness and organization of the content in the body
Group: Although I did not say anything in the body, I would like to evaluate the presentation as a whole and also my team mates, Lisa and Kaya individually. After looking at the video, I realized that we were not emphasizing the main points as much compared to our rehersal we did beforehand. Maybe it is because we did not have much rehersal time or we were just nervous to speak in front of the audience. However, compared to the other groups, our visuals were very very effective to persuade and address the audience the servereness of our topic. (Probably we had twice as much slides as the others?) To add, I thought Kaya and Lisa did very well in delivering the important contents in our presentation. Kaya explained the purpose of our campaign and why we need the money and Lisa stated how reliable we are effectively. If I were to add, I would say both of them spoke a little bit too fast; but I would say that would be my fault since my introduction went over the time alloted.
d) The conclusion and Q&A
Group and Myself: I think Lisa, who did the conclusion, did perfect (maybe speak slower as a said above) in tieing up the presentation. The part where she mentioned that since 21 minutes had passed, at least 21 children died because of AIDS deeply impressed me; and hopefully the audience. Before our rehersal, the conclusion was a little complicated but after giving ideas to wach other, we were able to make a simple, however effective conclusion. The Q and A was a little short in my opinion. We were planning to have about 7 minutes of Q and A but only had 4 minutes. So we should have ended the presentation a bit faster. Moreover, we forgot to repeat what the question was (eg. so your question is....) and ask the questioner if we answered his/her question clearly. Other than that, Kaya did great in going straight to the Q and A after Lisa's conclusion.
e) Use of visuals
Group: The group did very well regarding the visuals. As you can see, we used more visuals that the other two groups; I thought this was NOT a bad idea. Before, I thought having too much slides would make the presentation hard to organize; however, it turned out to be very effective. Most of the slides were decorated by Lisa (she loves making slides and searching for images) and she added images to reinforce the messages we wanted to deliver on each slide.
Myself: I mainly focused on the contexts rather than the visuals. This is because I thought without good contents, visuals would be worthless. However, I did take time to organize my visuals so it would easy for the audience to look at the visuals as a "support." (In other words, I made them simple to make sure the audience pays attention to my contents and listen to my words intead of looking at the slides the whole time) Therefore, in contrast to Lisa, I made my slides simple as possible. In my former ELP class, my teacher told the class that simple slides are better than ones with many decorations (such as words and images). Since I thought the same way, I decided to make the slides simple with few words and images to give impact.
f) Body language: Eye contact, facial expression, gestures, and postures)
Group: Overall, I thought the group was reading the script more than the other groups. Eye contact is essential in presentations like these because you have to have confidene in yourself to persuade the audience. In my opinion, eye contact is one of the key methods of showing that you have confidence in yourself. Therefore, we could not use the eye contact effectively. As for the facial expression, since our topic was rather serious, it was very hard to use facial expression. However, each of the member did not smile and kept a "serious face" to match the contents throughout the presentation. Since the some of the members kept their scripts in their hands, they were not able to use both of their hands to use gestures to deliver the message. And it seemed that they were just reading the script. Finally, as for the posture, everyone was fabulous at standing still without moving much; which can cause distraction.
Myself: For this presentation, I wanted to make sure I did not just "read " the script. By not reading the script, my words would be more persuasive because 1) I can make eye contact to the audience to address my message and to show them I have confidence in myself, and 2) I would speak in my own words and thoughts and even think of new, better ideas that are not on the script while I am presenting. After watching the video, I thought I was successful in achieveing my goal in the Introduction part. For the body, or the Introduction of AIDS, I thought I read the script a little. But as a whole, I wanted to really emphasize and get the audience's attention in the Introduction so I was statisfied with that. I tried to keep a "serious face" as I said earlier throghout the presentation to show the audience how serious our topic was. It seemed I did not use much hand gesture as I had been in the previous presentations. But maybe this was because since I was addressing a serious topic, no hands were needed to emphasize the points ( I think) . I gradually started using hands as I went into the topic of AIDS and a more general content. However, I need to use more hand gestures to emphasize my points. So I will make sure I will do that in thw future. And as I said above, I think I did not move as much as I had been, so I was satisfied.
g) Use of voice
Group and Myself: I think every group member spoke in a good tone of voice. Also, everyone spoke in a clear loud voice so I thought their was not any difficulty for the audience to listen to our presentation.
h) Other points (as you like)
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
a) The process of preparation and rehearsal
Group: I think the group did fairly well regarding the process of preparation and rehersal. We met a few times to organize our presentation and make sure it was ready to go. For example, we made the slides and suggested each other to see if it was effective or how it can be improved. Also, we made sure we all knew what parts to say in the presentation to keep the flow going smoothly;which is what we did in our rehersal. We went through our presentation about three times beforehand but I thought it was not enough to have confidence in myself.
Myself: Overall I thought I did well compared to the 1st and 2nd Presentation. This is maybe because I prepared faster than the other presentation; Although I started few days before... I was thinking about the topic but I could not think of anything interesting to say. I made my script right before the final, so I could not memorize all the contents I wrote; so I decided to forget about the script and speak in my own words as the presentation goes. As a result, I did not read the script much and was able to deliver the message more than if I were to read the script. Since I did not have much rehersal time on my own, the rehersal we did as a group was very important for me. So I was glad we were able to do a few rehersals before the final. (but as I said in the
b) The effectiveness of the introduction
Group and myself: Since I was the one doing the Introduction, I would like to reflect on my performance. After I watched the video, I thought I was able to successfully catch the audience's attention with the pause and low toned voice. In the feedback after the presentation, Sho and Matt also mentioned that I did well in my introduction. But my team mates and also my feedback partner mentioned that my introduction was maybe too long and I spoke too slow; so those are some points to keep an eye on in future presentation.
c) The persuasiveness and organization of the content in the body
Group: Although I did not say anything in the body, I would like to evaluate the presentation as a whole and also my team mates, Lisa and Kaya individually. After looking at the video, I realized that we were not emphasizing the main points as much compared to our rehersal we did beforehand. Maybe it is because we did not have much rehersal time or we were just nervous to speak in front of the audience. However, compared to the other groups, our visuals were very very effective to persuade and address the audience the servereness of our topic. (Probably we had twice as much slides as the others?) To add, I thought Kaya and Lisa did very well in delivering the important contents in our presentation. Kaya explained the purpose of our campaign and why we need the money and Lisa stated how reliable we are effectively. If I were to add, I would say both of them spoke a little bit too fast; but I would say that would be my fault since my introduction went over the time alloted.
d) The conclusion and Q&A
Group and Myself: I think Lisa, who did the conclusion, did perfect (maybe speak slower as a said above) in tieing up the presentation. The part where she mentioned that since 21 minutes had passed, at least 21 children died because of AIDS deeply impressed me; and hopefully the audience. Before our rehersal, the conclusion was a little complicated but after giving ideas to wach other, we were able to make a simple, however effective conclusion. The Q and A was a little short in my opinion. We were planning to have about 7 minutes of Q and A but only had 4 minutes. So we should have ended the presentation a bit faster. Moreover, we forgot to repeat what the question was (eg. so your question is....) and ask the questioner if we answered his/her question clearly. Other than that, Kaya did great in going straight to the Q and A after Lisa's conclusion.
e) Use of visuals
Group: The group did very well regarding the visuals. As you can see, we used more visuals that the other two groups; I thought this was NOT a bad idea. Before, I thought having too much slides would make the presentation hard to organize; however, it turned out to be very effective. Most of the slides were decorated by Lisa (she loves making slides and searching for images) and she added images to reinforce the messages we wanted to deliver on each slide.
Myself: I mainly focused on the contexts rather than the visuals. This is because I thought without good contents, visuals would be worthless. However, I did take time to organize my visuals so it would easy for the audience to look at the visuals as a "support." (In other words, I made them simple to make sure the audience pays attention to my contents and listen to my words intead of looking at the slides the whole time) Therefore, in contrast to Lisa, I made my slides simple as possible. In my former ELP class, my teacher told the class that simple slides are better than ones with many decorations (such as words and images). Since I thought the same way, I decided to make the slides simple with few words and images to give impact.
f) Body language: Eye contact, facial expression, gestures, and postures)
Group: Overall, I thought the group was reading the script more than the other groups. Eye contact is essential in presentations like these because you have to have confidene in yourself to persuade the audience. In my opinion, eye contact is one of the key methods of showing that you have confidence in yourself. Therefore, we could not use the eye contact effectively. As for the facial expression, since our topic was rather serious, it was very hard to use facial expression. However, each of the member did not smile and kept a "serious face" to match the contents throughout the presentation. Since the some of the members kept their scripts in their hands, they were not able to use both of their hands to use gestures to deliver the message. And it seemed that they were just reading the script. Finally, as for the posture, everyone was fabulous at standing still without moving much; which can cause distraction.
Myself: For this presentation, I wanted to make sure I did not just "read " the script. By not reading the script, my words would be more persuasive because 1) I can make eye contact to the audience to address my message and to show them I have confidence in myself, and 2) I would speak in my own words and thoughts and even think of new, better ideas that are not on the script while I am presenting. After watching the video, I thought I was successful in achieveing my goal in the Introduction part. For the body, or the Introduction of AIDS, I thought I read the script a little. But as a whole, I wanted to really emphasize and get the audience's attention in the Introduction so I was statisfied with that. I tried to keep a "serious face" as I said earlier throghout the presentation to show the audience how serious our topic was. It seemed I did not use much hand gesture as I had been in the previous presentations. But maybe this was because since I was addressing a serious topic, no hands were needed to emphasize the points ( I think) . I gradually started using hands as I went into the topic of AIDS and a more general content. However, I need to use more hand gestures to emphasize my points. So I will make sure I will do that in thw future. And as I said above, I think I did not move as much as I had been, so I was satisfied.
g) Use of voice
Group and Myself: I think every group member spoke in a good tone of voice. Also, everyone spoke in a clear loud voice so I thought their was not any difficulty for the audience to listen to our presentation.
h) Other points (as you like)
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
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