You will have read in my previous post that I am a huge advocate of online presentations and using the power of the internet to share knowledge and ideas. As part of Things 12 and 13 I have been asked to explore the process of creating and sharing a video, podcast, screencast etc. online. There are a number of different tools available and the Prezi presentations caught my eye to provide a new and fresh alternative to the commonly used Powerpoint slides.
We are not required to create and share something for this Thing, but I have had a bit of experience with this that I can comment on. I have delivered a live webinar over the internet as part of work activities at my sponsor company. The webinar included various people that could see the slides as I flicked through them whilst presenting the information verbally to them. The broadcast was also recorded and uploaded onto the company Youtube site for dissemination to wider audiences.
The overall experience was a bit different to what I am used to in terms of giving presentations because you cannot see your audience to engage and see how they are responding to your talk. Publishing the talk on the internet, however, gives people the opportunity to see my research and gain an initial understanding of the topic and my results without having to delve into papers, which can sometimes be difficult to access. I have also found that people are more willing to listen to a presentation than read through a paper. The presentation, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, gives a summary of information that is delivered to the listener – this is a lot easier to digest than having to pick out the finer details within a paper. In the first instance I believe that an online presentation is a very attractive communication method that can be followed up by a more substantial article, paper or report for more information if required.
engd researcher 