Blog Post #2

On December 12, 2012, we continued to focus on the topics that each student chose from the previous class (eg. Scottish independence, Mexican food, and etc). We also talked about how to effectively place the topics in order. For example, the presenter must organize the topics so that they are logical (eg. past, present, future). Additionally, the professor also explained to us that it is always a good idea to through in some jokes here and there to entertain the listeners. A boring presentation will often leave a bad impression and lead to an unsuccessful one. Lastly, he also mentioned that people tend to listen to the middle section the least, so it may be a good idea to put the least important information there. However, he also taught us about the segmentation method, which is a method to keep the topics interesting throughout the whole presentation so that the presenter can keep the listener's attention at a constant rate. I thought that learning this method was helpful because I know a lot of cases where the audience is half-asleep during someone else's presentations.

Professor Paterson also shared how he made his presentations interesting. For example, he would actually try to make the audience "feel" what it is like to be someone or to be in a certain situation. Then, we did a class exercise where each student had to think of a similar technique for their topics. The professor gave an example for the Scottish independence. He grabbed one of the student's bag and gave it to another student. This allowed the bag's owner to feel like she was untreated fairly, similar to what the Scottish were feeling. I was able to learn that involving the audience into the presentation topic is very effective and important in order to maintain concentration.

I think that this class was very helpful! I was able to learn more about how to make the presentation more interesting to the listeners. We were also able to brainstorm a lot of unique ideas with a small group about how we can make the audience to obtain a certain feeling in order to make the presentation more effective.