Donna Massam

How to make an effective presentation by Elizabeth P. Tierney

Although this isn't a book of the reading list from our VLP's (I couldn't find a book that i know be as useful as a presentation book as its one of the things i struggle with most in this area)the one that i originally wanted which was on the reading list had all of the books taken out so i settled on a book similar.

I can see that this book is going to become a very big help to me as i know we are going to have to do a number of presentations (we have to do a short presentation on the book synopsis)

I like the quote written in the introduction section of the book because i know that this would be something that i would do.

"I often tell the story of the first time i gave a speech. I was so nervous that i kept my eyes closed through most of the monologue. I kept hoping that if i didn't look at them they would quietly go away. When i had finished, I opened my eyes and discovered that unfortunately, my wish had been granted. There was only one person left in the audience. He was a bookish-looking fellow wearing a sour expression. Hoping to find some solace in the catastrophe, i asked him why he had stayed. Still frowning, he replied,"I'm the next speaker."
(Victor Kiam, American Businessman)

The book consists of 13 different sections which each help you with different sections to presenting an effective presentation. The first section of the book 'Introduction' gives you an introduction to presentations, explaining to the reader what they will get out of reading the book, this is of course that you will become a better presenter, being able to give better talks, run meetings better, talk at seminars better and to speak more coherent and clear in conferences too. The book has been written on the experience of Tierney from her education years and also from her education teachers and tutor, based on the mistakes Tierney mad and on lessons they taught her.
The second section to the book is called 'How to Communicate' this section explains the process of communication, expressing to the reader how to have a clear message and how to get that message across to the audience, helping you chose your choice of words carefully. The section i thought was most helpful in this section was the Common Problems heading, as this explains problems that you might come across and gives you more confidence on how to avoid them.
The third section of the book looks at Nonverbal, This section of the book expresses to the reader the body language the hold, including the ways they move their eyes aroun, the way they hold their body posture the way you hold your head as to look more at ease with thae audience rather than looking scared of them the last thing that she talks about is appropriate clothing to wear, making sure that you dress for the type of presentation you are to give.

The remainder of the book talks about the voice, how and when to speak with the right pace, when to pause, the type of pitch you use and how loud you talk. it helps you to prepare yourself for the presentation, how to structure it together. How to answer questions in an appropriate manner and how to respond to the audience with your voice. The book also helps you to handle your nerves, what to consider doing to help you complete the presentation in an effective way. The last section helps you with how to engage with the audience, how to handle any kind of disruptions in an appropriate way. It then tells you to reflect on your performance thinking about what you could have done better, what you would have done differently and also to ask for feedback on what others thought of your presentation so that they provide constructive criticism which will then help you with any upcoming or future presentations.

This is my final edit to the stop motion animation that my group produced, the music i have chosen to put to the animation is called Hypnotize from Flashkit.com. This sound loop was placed under the dance and techno section. The reason i chose to use this type of music track was because i thought that it made our animation look a bit more up beat because of the pace to the music.

Before starting at uni i previously studied Multimedia at West Nottinghamshire College in Mansfield. I completed a two year National Diploma in Multimedia. During this course of time (similar to Sarah's answer in our lecture last week) i had a very big problem with time keeping, always assuming that i had more time to complete my project work but the time always flies by and i found that when i came closer to the projects deadline i would have a pile full of work that still needed completing. So what i did to help myself with this was at the beginning of starting my FMP i wrote myself a checklist out and set myself date targets for when each section of the project would have to be completed by. This worked for me and i found that i wasn't panicking as much when it came close to the deadline because i had things completed and with having a checklist i found that i knew exactly where i was with my project work.

Thankfully my timekeeping didn't effect my grades as i would always get the work completed in time it just meant a few late nights and i finished my course with DDD which was good.

Through my time at Uni though i think what i struggled most with was the fact that i had to get in front of the camera, and seeing as me and cameras are not very friendly with each other, i was very nervous and scared, whilst i was studying at college i had to do a few presentations which had to be filmed, i was that scared i was shaking but i know that i've some how got to get used to it so instead of panicking when we were producing the images for the animation i jumped straight into the job at hand, i got in front of the camera and instead of worrying i just did it. I was really proud of myself and felt more at ease with the camera i was also really pleased with the outcome of the animation.

All in all my favorite subject to multimedia is website design, this is what i think i will be specializing in when i reach the second year. my plan is to hopefully start my own business as this is something i have always wanted to do and what better way than to do what i love to do whilst earning money. :). I am hoping that uni will give me enough experience and confidence to achieve my goals.

To begin with for this module we have to create a similar animation to the two examples below, using humans as the puppets in our own animation. Our animation is to be 30 second long, which means we have to take 360 images, obviously taking extra images to give us more to experiment with.

Working in groups we had to produce the photographs for our animation. Originally i was working in a group with Hayley, Abdul, Carl and Guv but this week a late starter joined our class so we took him under our wing and he joined our group, i was quite chuffed with this as Jason had a lot of good ideas to offer the group. Our group at first begun to struggle because we failed to agree on a specific idea, so we decided to come in last Friday and shoot our animation in our own time. This worked for us and we actually managed to produce all of our images.

We edit our images to create our animation in the up coming week, ill post the result when it is finished.

This image here is part of the second task we were set during induction week. The pinhole camera technique actually really impressed me as i never even knew this way of taking a photograph was possible. This took me a few attempts to produce an image with anything other than a blob on the photographic paper, this happened because on both my first two attempts the edge of the paper was covering the pinhole, with that section of the paper only being visible to the light i kept producing the blobs. Finally on my final attempt i created the image to the left, which if you look you can see the trees and parts of the building. What i particularly like about this image is the contrasting on the sky, i think it looks extremely effective. Some of the images that others produced in the group were very impressive too, some have extreme detail and you would find it hard to belive that a normal camera wasnt involved in the process.

I found this task quite frustrating to begin with because i was producing blobs and others had some really creative and detailed images, but i was really pleased at creating this image using an empty beer can.