Week 5

The main focus of this week's lecture was Presentation as a skill and how it can be used properly. There was also some talk about the formation of the teams for the group assignment. I must add that I found this lecture extremely interesting since it worked in conjecture with the previous week's lecture ("Critical Thinking Presentation and Public Speaking Skills").

Presentation, as a skill, is composed of these seven elements.

• Tone: Defines how do we sound when we talk and also it varies depending on our emotional state.
• Emphasis: Just like the name implies, its all about emphasizing certain words in a sentence.
• Content: Is about the actual words and their meaning. It is also about the correct usage of words in order to avoid misunderstandings.
• Humour: Can be used to draw even more attention, but at the same time if it isn't used properly it can lead to credibility loss.
• Speed: It can be used to build momentum, add anticipation and/or highlight a specific point.
• Pronunciation and Pitch: The practice of using certain “difficult” words and the proper spelling of them. Pitch can be summarized as a combination of tone and amount of loudness.
• Visuals: Is the usage of different means (besides speech and the skills mentioned above) in order to gain the attention of the crowd, like eye contact with them, using simple but effective visual effects etc.

In addition, the Presentation itself is divided in three sections.

• Introduction: Just like the name implies, Introduction is all about welcoming the crowd, identifying yourself to them so that they become familiar with the person making the presentation, explaining the to pic of discussion in order for everyone in the crowd to grasp atleast the basics of the presentation and to state the objectives of the presentation, as well as giving a faint outline of what subjects will be covered.
• Developing your argument: This is all about proper management of your time mainly, due to the time limits of a presentation. It specifies that one must use properly and effectively the time he is given to present his points and to give additional info/rationale.
• Conclusion: Is the last part of the presentation after all points are made. It is a summary of everything being said/shown until this part. This is the time also when the speaker can answer any questions the crowd might have about the presentation. Finally, when all this is said and done, the speaker thanks properly the crowd for their attendance before leaving.

Lastly, there was some in-class talk about the group assignment, and my group decided for the topic of our assignment to be Hard Drives. I must say that I found this as a topic to be pretty interesting and at the same time a chance to improve my IT knowledge.

G.