Reflection on the Class Presentation by Celeny Echevarria

 

How I Felt about the Presentation 

    This is the second SPC class I have taken while attending Miami Dade College. The first one I took was Introduction to Communication, it was fairly simple just write speeches and read them to your classmates. But in this course which is Introduction to Public Speaking I have noticed that it's more involved with group activities and working together with your classmates. After already establishing that this class was going to be mainly focused on working with groups, I was worried because of my past experience with working in groups. I have always done better working by myself than in a group because I've always felt that it's so hard to communicate what the other person's part is supposed to be especially if the group, I am working with we don't know each other at all. That has been an issue ever since I started MDC Live courses. Since we are not in a classroom, and we don't interact the same way with our fellow classmates it has been harder to create mutual friendships within the class leading to the problems of working in groups harder. Ever since then I've been dreading working in a group and have always tried to work by myself, but that changed for this class.

    Our first assignment was to create a group presentation for the three sections that are in the book ISpeak, we were divided into three main groups and then in those three main groups, we were divided into four subgroups in my group. By doing this the presentations were more organized and flowed when it came time to do the presentation. What I enjoyed a lot about this presentation was that everybody was willing to do their part and help each other out at least in my group I cannot say for the rest of the other group since I was not in the other two groups. I felt confident in my group because of how we communicated in our group chat to get well-informed about what we were doing. I felt that everyone knew their part and exactly what they were supposed to do, which was a surprise to me because of my previous past experiences working in a group setting. I appreciate the hard work of all of my group members put into our presentation because it was flawlessly done, it couldn't have been done any better with the amount of time we were given. And for the rest of the groups, I can say the same thing, very well done. Overall, this experience was very eye-opening in the way I felt about group presentations and working together with my classmate. I am glad to say that I am more than willing to work in groups than I did before. It was a great way to push myself out of my comfort zone and communicate with my group members. I learned a great deal about how to work in a group setting and I am grateful for it. Looking forward to keeping working with group one for the rest of the semester.

Presentations

 

    Starting off with group one, which was the group that I was in, we were in charge of describing in depth what chapter one through four had to say. Chapter one was about getting started and getting a general idea of public speaking and what is a presentation. The Second chapter was about preparing your first presentation and the steps that is needed in order to succeed. Chapter three was about selecting a topic and purpose to present in your presentation (a main idea to focus on). Lastly, chapter four was about analyzing the audience you are going to present your presentation on. Group one presented very well and went in depth about all the main points from chapter one through four.

    After group one finished group two stated and they were presenting chapters five through nine. That section was called Selecting and Arranging Content and it explains the process of organizing and being more selective on whats going to be on your presentations. Chapter five was about finding information and supporting your ideas that would be on your presentations. Chapter six was about organizing and outlining your presentation in order for it to make sense and flow while you are presenting it. Chapter seven was about delivering speeches, in other words how you speak to your audiences.  Chapter eight was about choosing your words for your presentation, meaning you can't just write a paragraphs or whatever comes to mind, it must be short and precise for your audience to understand. The last chapter for this section was nine, where visual resources and presentation technology meaning there has to be some type of visual representation like a picture or a video that the audience can connect with and that ties in with technology. Overall, group two did amazing in their presentation and I learned a lot from what they presented. 

    Finally, group three went right after group two and their chapter’s where ten through the appendix. Starting with chapter ten which was about presenting to inform meaning in your presentation must be informative to your audience. After you are done with your presentation your audience should come out with something new they learned about from your presentation. Chapter eleven was about presenting a persuasive message to your audience. You want your audience to not only listen to what you are saying but to get involved with your message and you can accomplish that with being persuasive in your presentation. Chapter twelve was about speaking on special occasions meaning give your audience a speech where they can connect with the event. An example of this is a graduation speech you want to connect with your audience and the event as well. Lastly on this section was the appendix, which was about working and presenting as a group, which is a very important skill to learn. Group 3 did an amazing job at presenting and explaining the chapters given to them. This group project was a great way to learn about the book and chapters in it. I would say it was very successful and the class worked wonderfully together.