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Technical Presentations. Technical Presentations ARE NOT. Simple demonstrations Simple accounts. “ So let me show you all how to properly swing a golf club!”. “ So let me tell you what really happened on the Mayflower’s ocean voyage!”. Technical Presentations ARE.
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Technical PresentationsARE NOT... Simple demonstrations Simple accounts “So let me show you all how to properly swing a golf club!” “So let me tell you what really happened on the Mayflower’s ocean voyage!”
Technical PresentationsARE... • Presentations that tackle particularly difficult material • Presentations with two primary goals • To classify the principle difficulty to audience understanding • To shape the speech to overcome the difficulty
General Guidelines for Technical Presentations Make appropriate word choices • Shorter and simpler is better • Avoid jargon
General Guidelines for Technical Presentations Make frequent use of examples and analogies • Examples keep interest and increase memorability • Use examples familiar to the audience • Analogies help us understand an unfamiliar concepts by comparing it to something familiar • Analogies are very important for all learning and particularly powerful for communicating highly technical information
General Guidelines for Technical Presentations Translate measurement scales into useful analogies • Many measurement scales defy comprehension • Explain scales carefully, completely, and simply • Help audience “identify” with quantities through analogy Example: How big is a 10 micron particle? • Not very helpful: Invisible to human eye, 1/25,000th in. • More helpful: 10 times smaller than diameter of a human hair
General Guidelines for Technical Presentations Create relevant visual aids
An Idea May Be Hard to Understand Because... It involves difficult concepts and language Example: Radiation Example: Flat tax systems
An Idea May Be Hard to Understand Because... It involves difficult to envision structures and processes Example: How the eye “sees” Example: How ion propulsion works
Conceptual Presentations • Illuminate a concept’s meaning and use • Clarify two types of features of the concept • Essential • Associated • Should contain the following... • A typical exemplar • A definition identifying essential features • A variety of examples and non-examples
Scientific Presentations • Offer a model or picture for understanding key dimensions of a phenomenon • Should contain the following… • A “big picture” visual to clarify whole and parts • Fully integrated organizing analogies • Excellent structural organizing devices to show part-to-whole relationships • Full transitions, previews, summaries • Explicit statements of relationship