How To Do A Presentation...

Following in calFUN's footsteps, I will now proceed to give you tips on how to do a proper presentation (and what not to do). The following tips are just from my experiences. If you do not agree with any of them, then screw you. I could care less (smirk).

The 'Do's':

• Present with a loud and clear voice.
  
• Speak at a good pace (e.g. pause in between sentences or points).
  
• Try to omit the "um's and uh's" as much as possible.
  
• Know (memorize) what you are presenting.
  
• Respect the time limit (if one is given -- and I sure hope one is).
  
• If presenting with PowerPoint, make sure you are on the correct slide!
  
• If presenting with PowerPoint, it is best to put the most important information on the slide (see point 4 below).
  
• Try to make eye contact with your audience.
  

The 'Don't's':

• Do not read. It makes the presentation uber boring.
  
• Do not speak so fast that people cannot understand what you are saying..
• If presenting with PowerPoint, do not put paragraph after paragraph of information and then proceed to read off the screen. We're in university. I'm sure we know how to read.
  
• In relation to the above, do not put everything that you will be saying on the slide. It just omits the purpose of "presenting" it orally, if we can just get the slides from the course website afterwards.
  
• Do not look towards the ground. We're not little ants. We're right in front of you.
  
• Do not start ranting on about how the government doesn't help you because you're a student (or any unrelated topics of your presentation) in the middle of your presentation (hahah...the student just started going on and on but she didn't even answer the question posed by the prof!)
  

The reason why I'm writing this is because in my POL3115 class, there are panel presentations in the second half of the class. And well, clearly, none of them have knocked my socks off (except for maybe 2). Our presentation did a pretty good job of trying to omit the 'don't's' and it reflected in our mark (17/20). Now, I don't know what the other people received but I'm sure it probably wasn't too good as most people fell asleep, listened to their iPods, read for one of their other classes, surfed the Internet, and generally was not paying attention to the presentation. I guess that's why half the class leaves after the break. Hehehe.

I try to pay attention to the presentations, but because they're uber boring....I can't. And worse of all, Wednesday's class begins at 8:30am so most people are still not awake.