Week 9 + Week 10

Due to the fact that last week's class was cancelled because of strikes, last week's lecture and this week's one were done on Tuesday.
This Tuesday we talked about our upcoming projects that will be due on the first days of January.The topic of the group project is "Web browsers" and we made a choice of three well-known browsers which are "opera", "mozilla firefox", and "internet explorer." A conversation about what we have to give out as projects and if we have any kind of problems with the assignments were mentioned.

In this week's lecture we also had the chance to talk about our development so far in this lecture and also to write about the feedback that we've been given so far from all the modules. It was something unexpected as we weren't prepared as to what to write about but it was a good chance of thinking what we have so far achieved or want to achieve.

Until the next time....God Jul Och Ett Gott Nytt År or simply Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Week 8

In this week's lecture the conversation was about report and paper writing. A report has to do with: a) presenting all the information that you found concerning a topic and at the end of it you can also recommend something concerning this topic, for example: how this product can be better, or what you think that this company should change etc b) you write something and you present it for a specific reason and for a specific audience c) you write something in order to keep a record of it. (Cottrell)

We also talked about two (2) parts of writing which are the following ones:
a) the ones that take part before you start writing and b) the ones that take part in order to help you start writing about the topic that you have chosen.(Crouch)

The tasks that take part before you start the writing process are the following ones:
1) to define the purpose: understand the reason that you want to write this report, what do you want to do with this report? do you want to inform/persuade/entertain? there must be a reason!
2)know your audience: you need to have an understanding of your audience and ofcourse their knowledge!
3) preparation stage: in this step you start searching for your topic and you collect a variety of previous written works. at that time you also write an outline which is something like a guide in order to help you in the next process. (Crouch)
An outline is something like a miniature representation of your work but with keywords or fewer words that will help you remember what you want to write in the actual paper!

Then.... comes the writing process in which you have to write the actual paper. You paraphraze, quote, cite resources, re-arrange the structure of the paragraphs or maybe thinking of removing a resource. But... you may have to re-write this paper again as you may find later on that something is missing or that something you added recently isn't that relevant.(Cottrell)

This lecture was important as it showed the structure of a paper in various stages. Every step of it was presented in a very analytical and helpful manner. In my previous studies we used to write different kinds of papers in every semester and i have an understanding of how a project looks like but again it's been a year since I finished my studies so this lecture came as a reminder of a project's structure. During my previous studies in few classes and especially in the public speaking one we had to write outlines of our upcoming speeches(it was a class that outline was introduced) . Sometimes it was not that easy for me to make this outline as i didn't know at that time what i would possibly want to write at that specific paragraph...i thought that ok i may write something now but tomorrow i may change my mind and the bad thing was that we had to give to the instructor the outline so we had to follow everything we wrote there in the exact order. I used this method twice or three times and then i came back to what i always do, meaning that i collect information about my topic, then i see what is relevant and what's not and then i start by writing down about this topic but without having any pre-planned outline of my future project. Now during this week's discussion concerning outlines i realized that it is a good way to write better your project so i will give again a try of it in projects that require more work.

Week 7

First of all Guten Monat (in German) or else Good month since it's already December!

Yesterday's lesson concerned the presentation side of a project.  There are seven (7) parts that a presentation is divided which are the following ones: a)  we need to plan this presentation,  b) to get prepared concerning the presentation and also to have a knowledge of what kind of audience will be the one that you will have to talk to (children, adults, their knowledge base etc),  c) to find the message that you want to present to the audience- it can be like you want to persuade them about something to buy or to do or you may want to inform them about something in general,  d) the media that you will use for this kind of presentation ( you can use videos, pictures, sound clips, anything that you think that can probably make your presentation attractive to your audience and that will present most effectively the topic that you will talk about),  e) delivery of the presentation - it's good to be prepared as mentioned in point b concerning your presentation. You can be prepared by reading your speech either alone or in front of a trustworthy audience of your choice (for example a friend, a family member or any other person that you think that has a valuable word to say). In this delivery part there is also and the way that you try to say something to your audience, the tone of your voice (voice plays an important role in speech as it is the main tool for communication to your audience apart from the presentation slides so you need to speak clearly!), the eye contact with the audience (it is very important to look at your audience while presenting something). f) the conclusion: you can summarize what's been said in presentation and g) key points: emphasize the key points of your presentation.  (London Metropolitan University powerpoint slides) 

Personally, I've been through this whole  process that was mentioned above during my almost four (4) years of my previous degree and I have a knowledge of how it is to present a project and how you need to deliver it and everything that involves it. I remember that we emphasized this whole Presentation process in a module that was focused only on speeches and how you can deliver a speech to persuade someone about something, an informative one and so on. In this lesson we had to make eye contact (it was a vital part of it) and I can say that sometimes I felt a little bit of anxious concerning this because until then I didn't have to talk in front of a big audience about a topic and make eye contact. It wasn’t only the eye contact that was important but also and the body language (how you stand in front of an audience and what messages your body conveys to them).  

This lesson concerning the presentation side of the project was interesting as it reminded me of the presentation process and used effective examples and explanations. As a lesson was a vital one as it will  always be in use in  projects and probably depending later on in the job that I’ll choose (but again it depends on what job you’re looking for, but it is important to have knowledge of presentation of a project or even of presenting your thoughts later on).