Prezi format

Prezi is a webpage where you can do presentations but in a different way. First, is not a program itself, but a webpage where you make an account and then have access to the Prezi.

The format works with a single slides which you can zoom and un-zoom several times, making it a fluid way of changing slides. It has a huge variety of backgrounds, sizes, models and colours. It gives a 3-D perspective, everyone can cooperate, it's easy and accessible.

Several companies has been using this web page for meeting with other companies and they improve it's use. As you can see in this link we already used this for a Communication's Skills Class.

Prezi is way much better than Microsoft Powerpoint because of the main point of the accesibility so everyone have a track of what are you doing. Also, not everyone has PowerPoint and when it comes for a teamwork, like my case, not everyone can agree with the whole presentation, so I would like to encourage people to use it in future projects.

Asperger's Syndrome

I have in my class a student that has Asperger Syndrome, so we spent a class talking about it. Not only the university thinks those subjects are important, but also for Communication Skills class, because this girl had severral problems and we never realized that.

The first time I saw this girl I didn't realize she was Asperguer nor nobody told me, but even that, I already have an Asperguer friend, so I know how to talk with them. Basically, you have to be distant but also salute them by looking at their eyes. They are not capable of talking a long conversation and they usually think the literal words of everything. Here is a vide ot understand better the situation for an adult Asperguer.

My schoolmate has no problems now that everyone knows about this Syndrome and I hope we can help her in everything we can.

PechaKucha

PechaKucha is a presentation format introduced in february of 2003 in Tokyo. It consists on a presentation (PowerPoint mostly) with 20 slides that changes every 20 seconds. The only neccesary thing the slides need is images and very little text.

The purposes of this new presentation format is to avoid people getting bored or read too much. That's why the PechaKucha only needs images, so the people can listen to the speaker and also, he has a supporting material to make the presentation more entertained. The 20 slides 20 seconds between each one means the total time of the presentation of 6 minutes 40 seconds, making it a decent time of listening.

This format has been so succesfull that several companies have taken it to apply in their presentations. Also, a web page has been created in order to track the most popular PechaKucha presentations made these days.

Personally, for the fist time you try to do the PechaKucha can be really difficult, but when you get used to it, it makes the work much easier. Give it a try.

Writting effective e-mails

Electronic mails are the best tool of communication nowadays. Fast, simple and has a worldwide connection. No matter if it's to a family member, friend or an employer, is neccesary to write them properly.

There are three types of destinataries: The normal one, Carbon copy (cc) and blind carbon copy (bcc). The first one displays all the destinataries that are going to receive your e-mail. The second one, Carbon Copy, sends a copy of the e-mail itself but you can't respond. Finally, the Blind Carbon Copy is made to send the-email that can't be respond and the receiver doesn't know the rest of the e-mails because they're hiding.

The subject has to be clear and compact, telling the main point of the whole e-mail. Also, the e-mail itself wil depend on which people are you sending: Long or short, formal or informal, etc. If you're writting to your boss, you have to be clear and specific and also, formal.

Also, check the ortography and paragraphs and make sure to put an end to the message, like "Greetings" or "See you". That final message also depends on who are you texting to.

Emoticons as a another route of non-verbal communication

I'm going to tackle now something appart from class but has to do with communication: Emoticons.

Back when the first cell phones were made and when Messenger appeared, something new was created: Emoticons. Those are faces that represent people's emotional status. There were two types: On the cell phones, people normally used some alphabetic symbols that readed, looked like a face. For example: :-) . The two dots represents the eyes, the dash a nose and the closed bracket the mouth. That means that person is smiling. On Messenger, on the other hand, were actually faces that were shown when you wrote the legend

The legend of the default emoticons on Messenger. Source

They had a huge impact on the new communication devices made in that time, so much that we're still using then those days. Several web pages were made in order to download more emoticons on Messenger and it was normal to find names with emoticons. People always tend to use them to express their feelings, emotions, to write shorter, to be sarcastic or ironic, etc. When you're not facing a person it's easy sometimes to know how are they, but now when using distant communication, so the emoticons are an excellent tool that hans't passed away yet.

Gestures, a vital piece of communication

In this class the secretary didn't prepare the class, so we moved quickly. This day the teacher talked about communication, that not always is the direct language the most important one when it comes talking about anything.

Just like last week, we watched another video, this time of a person giving a speech on a wedding twice. The first time he never made a gesture and was reading the paper's speech all the time. The second time, he was moving from right to left, making pauses, smiling, making a joke, pointing at the married couple... This was an example about how you should make a speech and how not to. In my opinion, is a big difference between the two of them and I realized that is very important to know how to talk in public.

Later, the teacher sent us an activity in pairs. First, we choose a quote from a pdf and tell it to our partner. Then I have to write about how he spoke, like gestures, eye-contact, etc; then we do the opposite thing. Later, we tell a childhood memory and do the same thing with the quotes.

This activity took me 20 minutes to do so.

I'll leave a video so you can see how important is the communication when it comes to give an emotional speech.

First class of Communication Skills

This is the first post for Communication Skills class. Somedays I'm going to write posts about what we do in class.

In every class, some student plays the rule of the secretary, which has several tasks. When the student arrives, he goes to the teacher's desk and pass list. Once it's finishes, the secretary explains what we did the last class in case someone missed the other day. Also, the secretary has to write in the virtual campus a schedule about everything done in the class.

In this class the teacher showed us a video about non-verbal communication  and after that, we reunited in a circle and discuss if we agreed or not. I didn't agree in some parts of the video, like the part that says :"You have to fake a smile and you'll be better". What's the point? That won't fix the problems you've got...
Anyway, after that, we made an activity where we choose the pictures: One of ourself, a nother one from a classmate(both pictures from the virtual campus) and another picture choosed by our own.

This activity took me 20 minutes to do it.

First post

Welcome to the second part of this blog. Now, instead on Calculus, this blog is going to be aimed for the Communication Skills class. I'll be posting several things we do in class, as well as another content. Enjoy.

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