Presenting in the Auditorium!

Hi everyone! Today I will start saying that this post is probably going to be a bit too long because there are a lot of things that I'd like to tell you about! I know long posts aren't good, but I have too much to say ;)

First of all, as the title says, today was the day in which we had to present our Aerospace Technology project in the auditorium. We were the third group to present its project.

At first I was a bit nervous, wondering if we would do it well or what would happen, but guess what? After the first group finished his presentation, we had a lot of technical problems and the second group couldn't present until 30 minutes later or so! This was because there was a power failure in the whole building and every time that the lights turned on, three seconds later the lights turned off again. This was quite annoying but it actually relaxed me! 

This was our paper airplane :)

After this, my only fear was if our airplane would fly while presenting. I'll explain this: to draw the audience's attention, we decided to make a paper airplane and throw it during the presentation. It wasn't the typical one, so we didn't know if it would fly (although we tried it before the presentation, sometimes it flew and sometimes it didn't).

Luckily it flew! In fact, the whole presentation went really well. I've improved a lot since I started this course, and I'm very proud about how the presentation went and about my progress regarding communication skills (especially with oral presentations).

Moreover, after finishing all the presentations, we were told that our project about the aircraft prototype for 2040 was selected to be the one that will be presented on the 25th June to some companies that are coming to the university! This is great news because it means that real companies are going to know our names! It's nice to know that sometimes our effort is compensated with things like these.

And since today was a great day and obviously I'm feeling really good (although the day after tomorrow I have a very difficult and boring exam), I'd like to share with you an amazing cover of the song "Feeling Good":

This seems to be the last post, regarding the fact that we won't have more Communication Skills classes, so I'd like to thank you all for reading my blog and I hope you enjoyed it! Maybe someday I'll create a new blog and I hope you like that one too!

Thank you all very much for reading! Bye!

Aerospace Technology Project (V)

So, on Thursday (as all of these days) we have been working with the Aerospace Technology project. This time, the teacher told us that if we wanted to, any of us could voluntarily present our project to the rest of the class. As nearly every voluntary activity, no one seemed to want to do their presentations, but I thought it was a good opportunity to present before the real presentation. This way we would be constructively criticized and therefore improve our presentation skills for the final presentation.

In addition, at first I doubted about if I wanted to present or not because we didn't prepare it much and therefore it would be improvised. But actually the teacher told us this was good because if we were able to improve our presentation without preparing it, once it is prepared it would be even better!

In fact, it was quite clear that the presentation was improvised because instead of lasting the required 5 minutes, we presented for about 10 minutes. Besides this, I realize I am improving my presentation skills and the main reason for this is because we have had to do many presentations all along the course. 

This makes me come back to what I have already talked about in other posts: the importance of preparing and practicing in order to improve anything, especially oral presentations. 

That's all for today, thanks for reading!

Aerospace Technology Project (II)

Well, on Thursday we continued researching and doing the Aerospace Technology project about the design of the aircraft for 2040. In my opinion what we did that day doesn't have much to do with communication skills, but I really enjoyed it and some nice and creative ideas actually came to my mind during this class (maybe the fact of not having a "technical class" made my imagination flow more).

Therefore, I can't give any opinion or advice about issues related to communication skills. Actually this made me ask the teacher what I could write about in this post, because the only things that I thought about during the class were issues related to fuel alternatives for the aircraft or different designs for aircraft configurations.

To be honest, I already knew I wouldn't get any clear answer (because I know the teacher wants us to discover the answer by ourselves, making us reflect about what we ask), but despite this, I finally asked. Guess what? All (or at least the majority) of the answers to my questions weren't actually answers, but instead she asked me the same thing with other words in order to make me think about what I had just asked. I don't really like it when people aren't clear and answer questions with other questions, but (unfortunately) I realized that I also do that... 

This reminds me of the typical saying: "Do not do to others what you wouldn't want others to do to you".

That's all for today. Thanks for reading!

Aerospace Technology Project (I)

Hi again everybody! Well, what I most liked from today is that we continued doing the Aerospace Technology project about the design of the aircraft for 2040.

Before, we were told (again) that, apart from the presentation that we will have to do about this project in the Aerospace Technology class (more related to technical issues), we will also have to do another one in the auditorium (more related with communication skills) and this one will have to be much more "simple" because we will only have 5 minutes to present the whole project and we will do it in front of many people who may not have any idea about engineering. So we will have to manage how to explain all the technical issues about our project in a way which anyone can understand, but this will actually require a lot of effort in order to "simplify" what we want to say without relying on technical data or concepts. 

The main idea from this post is that it is really important to learn how to communicate something to people who don't have the same knowledge as you have, because in the future we will surely have to do so, and probably many times!
Not everybody is an engineer...

Thank you for reading!

Powerpoint, Prezi, a Poster... or what?

Hi again! Well, today we had to make a little oral presentation, but we couldn't use PowerPoint to support it. I realize this is a really good idea because in my opinion, PowerPoint is a great software, but it is too much used, and sometimes it is better to make something different.

Therefore, what could we use instead of the typical PowerPoint? There are many answers to this question, and it mostly depends on what you are going to talk about. 

For example you could use some kind of poster (you can do it virtually by using the .pdf format) which shows as a whole all the main aspects you are going to talk about, using some images, graphs, etc... that make it more attractive. Or you could also do a mind map. Actually, today we were a bit "surprised" because one of the groups presented using the FreeMind software. In my opinion, it is a good idea to use it, but I personally don't like the image it gives to the presentation, because you actually don't see a presentation, but instead it is like an editor... I think the best alternative to using PowerPoint is Prezi. I really like this tool because it makes very dynamic presentations and you have much freedom according to design. If you are creative and you know how to use Prezi (I say this because at first it seems a bit difficult to use it... at least it was for me), you can make amazing presentations that really draw the audience's attention.

So those are the types of tools for presentations I think we can use, but that doesn't mean that they are the only ones! In fact, if you choose another one which hasn't been used yet, it may even attract more your audience, just because of doing something different to the rest!

That's all for today... Thanks for reading!

Adaptation to Change and Creativity Test

So yesterday we had a "relaxed" class, because we had to do a test (which actually was veeeeery long...). This was because an external company made this test for us and it will only be available until this Friday, so the teacher preferred us to do it in class, rather than at home.

Maybe the most interesting thing from the test was one part, which had some questions and exercises that had to be solved in a creative way. Two of the answers to the questions that most impressed me were from the following:

Q1: A man lies dead on a field. Next to him is a non-opened package. There is no one else on the field. How did he die?

Q2: A young man, for leaving quickly to meet his friends, forgot his driving license. Once on the street, he didn't stop at the red traffic light and continued through a road in the opposite sense. All of this was observed by a policeman, who didn't even try to stop him. Why?

The answer will be at the bottom of this post, but there is not one "correct" answer. That is what I like about this type of activities: you can be as creative as you want! In addition, maybe your answer is better than the theoretical one. 

Regarding the exercises, one of them was the typical one of joining 16 points with 7 lines (try it also with 6), without lifting your pencil and without going two times through the same point (in the case of with 6 lines, start and end at the same point).

The theoretical answer to the questions asked above are:

A1: The man jumped from an airplane but his parachute didn't open. That was the non-opened package.

A2: The young man was walking.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Search for this kind of activities because they are really interesting, valuable and fun! And there are loads of different types!

Thanks for reading my blog!

Time to improve!

Well, in our last class our teacher told us that we could use part of that class to modify any activity of the ones we had uploaded, if we considered to do so. 

The first thing that came to my mind when hearing this was "Great!" because on the one hand that meant we wouldn't have to do any new activity, and on the other hand we could improve our uploaded activities (without loosing time at home).

So when I started modifying some activities I realized how different we can see things depending on when we see them, because when I did those activities I thought I had done as best as I could and that they were "perfect", but now that I see them again there are many things that I decided to change in order to improve them.

What I noticed from doing this is that everything is improvable and relative to the moment, there is no final or "perfect" solution, it's only a matter of adapting to each time and situation.

Oral Presentations (I)

Well, today we have discussed about something I believe is the most valuable part of the subject: oral presentations. I believe in the importance of this issue because, actually, I'm not quite good at it and I realize a good oral presentation of any project can lead to many doors being opened.

My biggest problem when doing an oral presentation is re-explaining things. What I mean with this is that I usually try to explain myself as best as possible (I'm too perfectionist), but because of this I try to find the best words to explain it and I use to get them mixed up, and I think I end up confusing people instead of leaving the ideas clear. So what I must do is just let my words flow (which is quite difficult for me; but everything is possible through practice) and not re-explain things, because probably if I say something wrong, people won't take notice about it, but if I go back and explain it again, they will surely realize that what I said was wrong, and that doesn't give a good impression. 

In my opinion, the trick when you want to do a good oral presentation is just to prepare it and practice it a lot, and when I say "a lot", I mean A LOT! No good presentation is totally improvised, and if it is, the person who does it is actually a genius. 

Here I leave you a video which I think is very interesting about how to do great presentations:

That's all for today. Thanks for reading my blog.

HEY! Listen to me, please!

Well, hi again everybody! In today’s class we didn’t actually do much but there is a topic we discussed about which I think is quite important: drawing people’s attention when speaking in public. So how can we make sure that people are listening to us?

You could talk about a topic which really attracts attention, but anyway, if you speak during a long, long, long time, although it may be an interesting topic, the public will surely end up tired of listening and will get distracted with whatever happens in the room. So in order to draw the public’s attention there are some things you can do. The most effective one is to make an interactive conference, where you involve your public in the topic you are talking about. You can ask questions, give “live” examples using the people in the room or whatever other thing you may think of which can lead to a more enjoyable conference, just let your creativity flow. The best way would be to interact with those people who you think aren’t paying attention, because this way you force them to listen to you.

Body language is also really important. If you can move around the room you should do so, because maybe your words aren’t drawing someone’s attention, but if you move, he/she will end up looking at you just because, in some way, you are “disturbing” him while moving around. And this way you make people listen more actively, due to the fact that they have to follow you with their eyes.

It’s also important to look into your public’s eyes instead of looking to a paper (please, if you can, try to avoid reading things) or to the infinite. If you do so, the people you are looking at will feel as if you are only talking to them, involving them more in the situation. 

To sum up, if you want to hold a good conference and to make people listen to you, you should make it as interactive and dynamic as possible, and you must feel the connection with your public.

Thanks for reading my blog! I hope you find my posts rather interesting or valuable.

FreeMind

Well, this time I’d like to talk about a program that we had to use today and that I had never heard of before: “FreeMind”. 

It’s a really interesting program which creates mind maps or schemes in a really organized way. You can divide each point in several ones in an easy way and you can hide those points you don’t want to read at the moment and you can open them later (when you need to do so); so this way you don’t see a HUGE scheme with many different points which are also divided in many others, which may be also divided in many others, and so on... By the way you can open only the points or ideas you are interested in and you can hide them once you have read them, making it easier to read. 

In fact, I think it is quite useful and I may continue using it in the future. The only problem is that (obviously) you need to have the program installed in order to open a FreeMind file on your computer. Fortunately it’s free to download! But not everybody knows about it.

By the way, it is always interesting to know about new programs different from the typical Microsoft Office, which doesn’t mean that this last one isn’t good (because actually it’s really good); it’s just that they are different ways of doing things.