Ready Set Go

I received tentative approval to begin working on my Ed Tech Internship under option 2 - Conference Presentation. I will need to begin collecting all my thoughts and artifacts related to my presentations this Spring.

The bulk of my work was in creating the Semantic Web presentation for the TechNet conference on March 12th. This presentation was different than the usual "How To" workshops because the semantic web is still developing. I had presented a paper in October of 2007 at the AACE E-Learn International Conference and wanted to leverage that information in my new presentation.

Some of the challenges that I foresaw were:

• Presenting a very technical topic to a semi-technical audience


• Creating interest in an evolving technology that is not fully implemented


• Since this was my first time to attend the TechNet conference, knowing what to expect in the level of web skills from the attendees


• Creating a "take-away" document that would provide sufficient structure and references even though my PowerPoint presentation would not be in outline/bulleted format

In addition, I wanted to utilize some of the principles and techniques for effective presentations that I had been reading about in Gar Reynold's and Nancy Duarte's books (Presentation Zen and Slide:ology)

• Minimize/eliminate bullet-points


• Use slide transitions that aid in unifying the presentation


• Consider the effects of color selection


• Only use 80% of the allotted time - no one ever complained because the speaker went to short.


• Recapture the audience's attention every 10 minutes