PRESENTATIONS

The late Steve Jobs was considered a "magician" at giving presentations.
Let's watch an old (1997) session he led, first without sound and then with (please notice some of the "bad" words he uses.)
YouTube link (alternative)

What do you notice about his "presentation skills" (what he said and how he said it)?

PowerPoint

For a lot of people "making a presentation" means using PowerPoint (or another program such as OpenOffice "Impress").

The biggest problem I see with these programs is that people spend much more time organizing "pretty pictures" than they do on the content of what they actually say.

Anyway, here's a relatively humorous look at some problems these "slide shows" can encounter. -> Life after PowerPoint

As we've discussed, all class participants are required to make a presentation. The basic idea is to give people a chance to get up in front of the group and practice their English. Of course you can be nervous if you'd like.

The presentation doesn't have to be about any special topic and there's no special "time" requirement; it's up to you. It can be done on Tuesday or Thursday, depending on how high-tech or low-tech you want it to be.

In terms of "high-tech" presentations, I guess the best-known program to help create them is MS PowerPoint™. Here's are some tutorials that use Flash "movies" to explain how to use the program.

The tutorial is from the University of Pennsylvania's Biomed Library. It's specifically about PowerPoint 2003, but the versions are pretty much alike.

Please click here to get to the tutorials.

Now that you've got some information about how to use PowerPoint, please click here to see some "PowerPoint tips".

When you've finished, please take a look at "presentation skills self-evaluation". It's also from the U. of Hong Kong site.

By the way, please remember that - after you say "Hello" - the very first step in the presentation is to give a brief overview of what you're going to say. You can call it the "overview", "outline", "structure", or whatever you want. The important thing is to give your audience an idea of what's coming.

This is also a good time to introduce any vocabulary or "technical terms" that are important for what you're going to explain and which you think the listeners might not know.