Presesntation

The last R&P class of the autumn term was the time for presentations. My topic was Next to Normal, the musical. I had fixed my slide in a way to unify colors in purple, the theme color of that musical, and had been thinking how to make my presentation better than the one I did last week. However, when my turn came, I got too nervous to do all of the things I had planned. I sometimes forgot to keep eye contact with my listener, couldn’t speak smoothly, and took too much time thinking the answer of the listener’s question. I realized that I needed more and more practices to improve my presentation. As a listener, I also could feel the presenters’ nervousness through their presentation, but at the same time, all of them seemed enjoying the opportunities to show their ideas of the topics they are interested in. I could understand that beautiful pictures and videos help the listeners to understand the presentation visually. The presentation was difficult, but I could learn a lot of things that are needed to make a great presentation.

Preparing for Presentation

The last Wednesday, we practiced our presentation for the last R&P class of this term. I was relieved to hear that it’s just a practice and the teacher doesn’t evaluate it, but still, I felt nervous when I speak in my turn. My presentation was about one of my favorite musicals, “Next to Normal.” Because I love the musical, I have a lot that I want to talk about it. The large ideas of mine made it hard to organize the presentation and to speak calmly. Through practicing the presentation, I could find points that I have to change. The voice have to be more clear, it is needed to make eye contact to communicate with the audience, and more slides can make the presentation more interesting. The confidence is one of the big problems. The unclear voice and the not making eye contact issues were occurred because I didn’t have confidence in me. I think we can get the confidence when we practice again and again, so I will practice.

Zotero 2

Last class we learned how to use Zotero more effectively and we actually practiced to add citation to our own essay. My essay was not completed, but it was great to try using it on my own. I was surprised when Rab told us we could save pictures on the web site into Zotero as well. I would not have found how to do that if he had not taught me. Through the last two classes, I felt Zotero was really smart tool. I had downloaded it in my personal computer already, so I will use it when I write essay or whenever I need it.

Zotero

The fourth R&P class was all about Zotero. At first I had no idea how useful it is, but at the end of the class, I was impressed because it had a lot of advantages for my schoolwork. When we write essays or any other papers, Zotero can automatically make a citation using the information it has, such as the title, author, publisher and so on. It was surprising that it can be used not only for the books but also for the newspapers. We don’t need the Little Brown Handbook or SGW to check out how to write a citation anymore. I had little concern about remembering how to use it completely because there were a lot to learn and we just looked at how Rab used it at that time. We practiced to find and add books, which looked useful for our essay, to the personal library of Zotero, but didn’t make a citation note actually. I was not sure whether I could do it on my own, but I was excited and relieved to hear that we can do that in the next class. I’m looking forward to do that.

Library Orientation

Last Wednesday, we had library orientation in MMR instead of the usual class in the ILC room. We learned how useful the searching tools on the ICU library website are. I didn't know that we could search for the past newspapers by using just one tool called NexisLexis. It was very easy to find the right articles. We can search them by using their publisher, keywords, and dates of publications. I am excited because I could learn a lot of things through this lecture. It is great that from now on, I can find and use the suitable articles or books for my essays, papers and so on.

The second class

At first my group members and I got together and we learned how to make graphs using the survey we made and got answers last week. I was surprised because it was really easy to make the graphs. It takes me only one minutes or so. I thought it was useful when I write report because it shows us the result of survey visually and that makes the report easy to understand. Also, we learned how to use screenshot. I first thought that Rab called it awesome to tell us how useful it was, but later I noticed that the actual name of the tool was "Awesome Screenshot". It is funny name, but this screenshot was really awesome. After we download it there is one little button looked like lens of camera appears on the screen bar. All we have to do to save the screen is click the button. And we can also edit the image's size, or add some comments on it eaisily. I'll use it in my computer, too.

The first R&P class

The very first lecture we had from Rab was how fantastic Mac products are and how crap Windows products are. I am now using Mac products, so I want to use these opportunities to get to know about them better.
I learned several things in the first R&P class. I knew that Google has many tools such as Gmail or Google Documents, but I didn't know it has such a usuful tool to make a survey easily on my own. By using the tool, we can make various kinds of questions, such as multiple choice questions, the questions which request answers in sentence,  and so on. I was surprised to see that the result of the survey Rab offered us to answer was automatically formed as a graph immediately. I thought it was great because when I want to collect general opinions for my report or something, I can use it and after the survey, computer will do all the troublesome tasks like counting the numbers and making graphs. I am glad that I could learn such a convenient tool.