Chapter Presentation

Alrighty, so I know I'm really late on this, and I know that's not really an excuse, but I'm a little technologically impaired and the couple of times I remembered and tried to watch the video for our group, the internet usually stopped functioning. (Maybe someday we'll get Google Fiber.)

Anyway, the group presentation (minus the sound) was definitely a learning experience. As much as I hate watching myself and feeling my discomfort of presenting magnified as I relive it, I know it is useful for my improvement.

Two things I did well:
1) I smiled. Personally, I can never tell if my smile is genuine or a smile from nerves/discomfort. If the audience can't tell, then I guess it can't be a bad thing. So there you have it: smile even if you don't feel like it. Even if you feel weird, it usually makes the audience feel less-weird and they don't even notice you having a brain-fart and forgetting everything you planned to say. Unless you point it out. Moral of the story: act confident by smiling and going with the flow without drawing attention to flaws.
2) I managed to gesture to the screen with an open hand. I was able to draw attention to the screen when necessary and even did it fairly professionally by not pointing. Sometimes I feel like pointing helps me focus on specifics as I'm speaking, but the open-handed gesture is more professional and less-demanding. So I need to remember to keep it Vanna White style: open hand, big smile, and meaningful gestures.

One thing I can improve upon:
TALK LOUDER. Someday I'll learn how to use my loud voice in front of people. Hopefully sooner rather than later because 9th graders are not going to respect and listen to a mouse in front of the room. Change in volume and speed in speaking can help emphasize and draw attention to specific points, but it's obviously important for people to be able to hear you. It all goes back to the confidence issue: speak like you mean it and mean what you say. Also, I've always struggled speaking loud enough in front of people, so I need to try speaking about 2-3 times louder than I think is necessary. Maybe even 10x louder.

One thing the group did well:
Our slides were well-organized and the agenda was very useful. We had the presentation organized and most of the slides had a good format and were very readable. Because we knew the agenda, it was easy to plan and stay focused and anticipate our next moves.

One thing the group can work on:
First off, we THOUGHT the clicker worked, but it actually wasn't working, so practice is important for using technology in presentations. But on to the real thing we can work on: transitions. We could definitely be more fluid and practiced at passing off the presentation floor to the next person and introducing ourselves. Rather than trying to ignore the elephant in the room during transitions, it can sometimes be better to just acknowledge the transition and let it be part of the presentation instead of letting it distract from the presentation.

So there ya have it, folks. Practice presentations. Learn good presenting skills and keep the good, start more good and stop the bad. We all have things we can work on individually as well as when we're with a group in order to really reach group synergy.