4)Effective presentation

During my first few weeks in college I was asked to put together a five minute presentation on any topic of my choice. At the beginning I was very scared to even start this presentation, as I haven’t done a presentation before. Especially not in front of my class. I found the whole idea very challenging.

 For my presentation I chose to do “Sneezing” I chose this topic because I sneeze. A lot. While preparing my presentation I found out loads of new information about sneezing, I created all of my different slides and I even inserted a short video. On the day of my presentation disaster struck. 

The video didn’t work and due to my lack of preparation I was under five minutes. I was scared and I was speaking too fast. From having the experience with doing a presentation I would now say that it is really important to be prepared.  

If I was to go back and redo my presentation I would stop being so nervous and talking too fast. I would seem more interested in my topic so that the audience is also interested not as if I’m just giving them the information so that they don’t do anything with it.  One tip my lecturer told me was to “tell em what your gonna tell em, tell em, tell em what you told em.” If I was to do another presentation I would make sure I used this tip and I would connect with my audience more. I would also prepare for the worst. 

1) Effective note taking

  

     In school i was never any good at taking notes. I would vary rarely take anything down which i wasn’t told to take down. However since i started college it has become essential that i do take notes.

    Note taking in college is extremely important as i now have assignments and tutorials which i need to have notes and information to help me from the lectures. At the start of college my note taking skills were very limited.

 I found myself writing pages and pages of notes and not actually taking anything my lecturer was saying in. I was taught in my communications class many different note taking skills such as spider diagrams and bullet points. For me spider diagrams really help me. The information is made clear on the page in front of me. I can see connections between relevant important points. 

For me reading pages and pages of information is too difficult to take in that’s why I find laying out information in a visual sense or watching videos on the topic allow me to take in the information more efficiently.

 

I learnt how to take notes efficiently once I started college. In a number of different tutorial classes I was shown how to create spider diagrams, mind maps and timelines of different subjects or topics. I really found this very effective for my specific learning type. 

 

Effective note taking has really helped me in college. I find myself more prepared for class and lectures and feel in on top of my work.