MailaDiaz Post:1

 

PowerPoint, like many other resources used to enhance a speech can be very useful. When used correctly these resources can help aid your presentation and guide your audience. Keep in mind that they are to enhance what you are going to be talking about. We had the opportunity to use PowerPoint in our last assignment as a guide for our presentations. I learned a lot from my classmates that day. I learned about things I shouldn’t do, things I should, and things I can improve. 

 

When it comes to presenting, we should keep in mind that we only have a certain amount of time to get our points across. It is best to keep your word short and simple to keep your audience engaged. You must also be visually entertaining. I learned this from my classmates last week. I noticed that after a while I started losing focus and getting distracted. All though they were great presenters they went way passed their time limit therefor lost people’s interest and unfortunately did not give enough time for the next presentation. When presenting, one should be mindful of others time. 

 

A presentation should be visually entertaining whether it be you or slides you may have prepared, but also not too entraining that the audience cannot focus on what you are saying. You should also be prepared for what you will be speaking about. You should also be comfortable with the subject you will be talking about. In other words, you need to know what you are going to be presenting and what kind of message you what to get across. Last week I saw many people who had a great understanding of what they were talking about and some who did not. It is very easy to notice when a person has an understanding of what they are saying. For example, you can tell when a person is speaking confidently about their subject even if they are nervous. When speaking you also have to be mindful of your tone and volume. I noticed that while my classmates were presenting sometimes, they sounded robotic or with no emotion in their voice. Which are also signs of not being comfortable with your topic. When one is comfortable with their subject, like I said before, you should be confident in what you are saying, and it should sound smoothly.  

When making a group presentation there should always be good communication within the group or else things will not run smoothly. Think of it as a wagon with four wheels. If one wheel has a bump, yes it will still move and get you where you want to go but it won’t be a smooth ride. It would be a bumpy ride and very uncomfortable. Good communication within a group is key in a group presentation. It can help you be more confident. For example, if the group does not have good communication there could be a lot of problems when they present like not knowing who is going to be in charge of sharing the screen in our case. In our previous classes I witness a few examples of bad communication within the group and some good ones too.  Some people didn’t know that their teammates weren’t in class that day or didn’t know who followed them in the presentation. We should also review our content as a group so that we all have an understanding of what we are trying to show our audience. 

I would like to now critique my classmate’s previous presentations. Reminder, this is for growth prepossess and it is not my intention to down grade any one person. I honestly think we all did a great job hence this was our first presentation. I noticed that group 1 had a lot of ups and downs on their presentation. They started off pretty good but then started sounding monochromatic as if they didn’t really understand what they were trying communicating. They also had quite a lot of videos that took a lot of time and after some time became tedious to listen to. I understand that they were nervous because so was I, but the time limit was forty-five minutes to an hour, and they went way passed that. There were some technical issues, but we do not really have control over that. When it was time for group three, they were unprepared or had bad communication within the group and didn’t know who was going to share the screen. They also had a few members missing. Their presentation was also very repetitive and was very tiering to listen to. I would also like to mention the participation of our class leaders. I wish they had been more engaged in what was happening. My group was not aware that one of the leaders was going to give an introduction of our group and we found out only a few hours before class and when it was time for the introduction, he had prepared a whole different PowerPoint causing our person in charge of screen sharing to be confused. This confusion also caused us to be more nervous. We had everything planned and the unexpected intro threw us off. I understand that this was everyone’s first time, but I wish that there was better communication next time. 

 

In conclusion of this reflection / critique, everyone did a great job on their first presentation. There were some problems along the way like bad communication, poor internet connections, and time. However, I did learn a lot from this previous experience. For example, not to overload the slides and make sure to not waste too much time also to keep good communication within the group and with the class itself. This presentation served as a good example for our up coming presentation. And hope that this information would be use full to me in upcoming presentations and give me the confidence to speak fluidly. Thank you for your time and I hope that this reflection was useful.