Presentation Tips and Building Professional Relationships through Social Media

Presentation Tools and Related Information

Presenting information to an audience is incredibly difficult when you don't know what you're doing or when you're nervous. I know many of us have been scared and nervous to present a topic in front of a lot of people, but how can we improve our presentations to make it seem more attractive to the viewers? Personally, I don't really present my information well enough, but maybe that's just because I don't practice enough, or I just don't know how to create the presentation. 

    The amount of mistakes I make in terms of designing my presentation is not appealing at all. Since I am not as artistic or creative as others, my presentation slides and information being presented are usually bland and not as exciting compared to others. I learned that to have a nice presentation that will attract viewers, I have to keep it sweet and concise. There's a lot of people that see my presentation and is immediately drawn away from it because of how long my intro slides are. In addition, I've learned that using Clip-Art is something that many people are moving away from because of how much better the other PowerPoint plugins are compared to it. For example, using diagrams, templates, graphs, or images can definitely reel the audience in which allows for creative thinking to occur. 

    Furthermore, too many sound effects, words, and transitions will make the presentation to look like there was too much effort put into it. What I mean by this is when there is too many sound effects or transitions, it takes the seriousness away from the presentation, which is unprofessional when in front of a large audience. In relation, too many words on a slide is not professional because the audience wants the presenter to do most of the talking instead of reading from a slide the entire time. Eye contact must be present most times to the audience and should keep in mind of the information being delivered. If you follow all of these steps, your presentation will be concise and will enable you to present your information effeiently to the audience without losing their attention from the beginning. 

Office Mix    

    Microsoft PowerPoint, a presentation app is an efficient way of presenting information because of the simplicity and many of features it has to offer. However, by using Office Mix, a plug free plug in for Microsoft PowerPoint, the functions allow for the presentation to be more interactive and more appealing for the audience. After OfficeMix is downloaded, you would open PowerPoint and see the Mix toolbar at the top. There will be more features that allow for the presentation to be more interactive. For example, there is a quiz and poll option which facilities tracking students' progress. With this feature, you can also see how long each student spends on each slide. Essentially, when an individual would finish the quiz or poll, the presenter would be able to view the statistics of it and can even generate a graph with the relevant data to present in front of the class.

    In addition to this feature, users can now also record a presentation with their audio and video by clicking on "slide recording" if on Microsoft PowerPoint 2013. If presenting a STEM related class, Office Mix is useful because of the flash demonstrations and experimental models such as GeoGebra and Khan Content. Like I said previously, the audience would be intreaged because of the interactive tools that allow for them to participate in. This also eliminates the use of Clip-Art and writing too many words in a slide at once which gives the audience the opportunity to take a break from a long worded presentation. 

    These features are all amazing, but there is one last feature that tops it all off. EdX, a plugin that shows the statistical values and contributors of a slide along with the time spent and average attempts it took that user to do. Other than that, Office Mix is truly a blend of many plugins that functionally work with PowerPoint to make it more interactive and useful because of how many features it has.  

Prezi

    On the contrary, an app that I used a lot in high school was Prezi, which is a presentation tool that is mainly for academic purposes, but can be used for other presentations as well. In class, we talked about a lot of different presentation tools, but for me, Prezi resonated with me the most because of how much I used it before. Like PowerPoint or any presentation tool, you start off with a blank canvas and can embed anything into each canvas. The difference between Prezi and Microsoft PowerPoint is the non-linear path that the audience can take, which changes the path for every presentation depending on the audience. On Prezi, you select a canvas to start with, and whatever canvas that was will proceed to the next canvas in order, just like PowerPoint. However, with Prezi, if you zoom out, you can go to any canvas in the entire presentation. I like how Prezi can be easily embedded on any type of website or blog, unlike PowerPoint, which needs access to view it. 

    To be honest, the strengths definitely outweigh the weaknesses of Prezi because of the different type of presentation tool it is. Comparatively, the weaknesses of Prezi are relevant because of how inaccessible it is. If you wanted to read the transcript of the entire presentation, screen readers can't even read it. And if you can, you would have to scroll all the way down to view everything. Additionally, the difficulty of mastering Prezi is extremely difficult because of how many features it has. There is a lot of technology and tricks involved, but can learned if used correctly. To reiterate, the tools useful for a presentation  must be used in a manner that allows for the audience to be attentive without boring them with the excess of words, transitions, or sound effects. 

Light, Bright, and Polite: Chapter 3

    Without knowing what shows up when you search your own name is dangerous if you potentially want a job and got an interview. For example, if you went to a job interview, the employer will look at your resume and will also look at how you present yourself online. In the real estate industry, Ochs explained the process in which employers do to see whether a candidate is good enough to work. The real estate employers look up the candidates on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn and sees if the future clients is self-centered or outreaching, and sees how they interact with other people over social media. However, this does not mean to avoid social media, because employers want to see their future clients building relationships and engaging with their communities. 

    Employers will search for you, so be sure to check what pops up when you search your name every so often. Ochs recommends to check it once a month and created a tool called "footprint Friday", which helps you search for yourself online each week in less than 5 minutes. I think this website is insanely helpful before applying for a job since it searches your full name along with additional terms that the employer might search for. 

    Say you get the job you were looking-- whatever you do after will reflect back on the company because of your professional and personal relationship and reputation between the company. This is just like being in a school club because if you do something seen as disgraceful in front of the whole school, the club will be effected too and will be looked down upon because of your action. 

    Your digital first impression is the insight into the mind of an employer as to others think about you. this is helpful because you should clear everything that may deem not professional online to tarnish any bad thoughts about you. Like Ochs explained, not everything is about the first impression. There are layers underneath and you should be aware of EVERYTHING at all times because you never know when someone unexpectedly looks up everything about you. Ochs used the analogy of cleaning your apartment and when your mother-in-law shows up randomly to keeping your digital footprint clean at all times. Essentially, be prepared for everything regarding social media and everything online because it can always bite back if not taken care of.