Week #3 There's more to a presentation than organization

The most memorable presentations are the ones that are organized well, included a variety of visual aids and presentation methods and spoke passionately about their topics. Every time I look at President Obama's speeches, all of those things come to mind. (Even though we all know he does not write his own speeches, he is still a rather captivating speaker.) With all of that in mind, I must talk about a speech last year that I was an unfortunate witness of. His speech had all those things and was still hard to watch. I took a special education class last spring semester. We all had to talk about a specific area of special education that we were interested in and give a presentation on it. This particular young man's topic was on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and the controversy behind its treatment methods. The topic was very intriguing. His powerpoint presentation included very vivid visual aids and the information was well organized. Everything looked good... until he spoke. He didn't seem that nervous either. He kept talking about drugs and asking other classmates if they wanted drugs. He, then, talked about personal experiences with his parents when they were on drugs that made everyone uncomfortable. He included statistics on death and related it to Ritalin and it's impact on children with ADHD.

The point of my blog is that there are other factors beyond what we learn in the textbook that makes a good presentation. The presenter should know what is appropriate. They must understand the audiences' level of comfortableness and present things in a more professional manner. In the speech language pathology community (I'm a communications disorders major so I'm familiar with the jargon), we would diagnose him with pragmatic social disorders. Pragmatics are things like picking up on social cues and knowing appropriate mannerisms and when to use them, which he seemed to lack. He was trying too hard to entertain and shock the audience into paying attention to him that it became his downfall. We did pay attention to him... but for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes its better to have a few audience members sleeping in the back than to over do a presentation and become a distraction. The audience doesn't get the message of your presentation and they are paying attention to all the wrong things.