I am glad to say that I have completed my final presentation for Speaking of Bicycles. It has been an interesting semester where I got the chance to develop my skills as a public speaker. Overall, I felt more confident going into this last presentation.

I think that confidence is important in determining the outcome of a presentation, I also believe that greater confidence could be obtained in different ways. Certainly being more confortable with my classmates helped me be less nervous before and during my presentation which gave me more confidence. Moreover, understanding the public speaking techniques taught by Mr. Hunt such as: breathing, voice projection, building credibility…, allowed me to be more knowledgable which also gave me more confidence. I believe that this confidence made it possible for me to find the type of speaker that I am and I think that it progressively showed as the presentations went on.

Similarly to my last presentations, in my final one, I talk about a relevant and important issue, stress and coping, in a way that was trying to also be involving and entertaining. Evidence of this can be seen where on the one hand, I advocated for music therapy by showing the research that supports it, giving factual, logical support, while on the other hand I was more conversational in stating that we can all relate with music being a positive factor of our lives, in a more involving and humorous way. Prior to giving my presentation I visited the speaking center which gave me a great opportunity to further practice giving my speech. This was really helpful. Reflecting, I would have hoped to have more time preparing this presentation in order to figure out how to add music to some of the words in my power point slide. I believe that this would have made my presentation more entertaining, however, the visual aids also did well. Something that I have to keep working on is relying less on my notes, I always found that hard to do but, I feel that the more I practice the better it will be.

I enjoyed this round of presentations because everyone got a chance to advocate for something that they were interested in or cared about. This brought out some really interesting topics, from Amandas’ informative presentation on ‘Say Know to Drugs’ to Abbys’ fascinating account of the Filipino veterans parade that she attended. I thought that Victoria had a really powerful message in her video presentation and that it was well transmitted. Finally, I thought that Jack was skillful in advocating that there should be better programs to teach people about guns while, at the same time, also teaching us some important information about guns, nice! In conclusion, I can say that I have enjoyed all our presentation and that I hope to remember them for long to come.

In order to do some final practices before my presentation today, I decided to go to the Speaking center. I met with Sophia Obregon who was extremely helpful and had some really good suggestions on how to improve my presentation. Going in I was hoping to receive some help on how to add music to a particular word on Keynote, because I was struggling on how to do it, however, not even with the help of Sophia I was able to add music, never mind. On the other hand, I was able to practice my presentation twice and get some feedback from Sophia. Altogether I think that she liked my presentation, in particular she said that she thought that I had good visual aids for my power point, saying that its often something hard to do. Similar to last time, visiting the Speaking Center provided me with some good advice. Finally, practicing my speech with Sophia made me feel more confident about presenting to the rest of the class.

Finally, for my last video practice I presented my speech as if it was on the day. This helped me practice in a similar environment to the one of the day. I always like to give all my presentation a mock run

Hi everyone, for this second video practice I practiced using my slides. It’s always a good measure to practice the transitioning of your slides well ahead of the presentation. I have always found the process of making power point slides to be fun because you can express ideas in many different ways. In the next video practice I will combine the first two videos to practice, presenting with my slides while standing.

Hi everyone, this is my first video practice. For this first practice i thought to rehearse the speech without the presentation so to get a sense of how it sounded. However, here I think that I was still not fully confident with the delivery of the speech so I practiced more, the next time with my slides.

Hello everyone,

My name is Ettore Crocetti Marzotto and in light of this advocacy presentation I thought that I would bring you some advice from the field of Psychology.

As you may know, I am currently a psychology major here at USF and with this semester being nearly over, I can pretty much say that i have completed a full class of psychology. During this term something that we discussed in the lectures was stress, we also talked about some of the coping mechanisms that are available and how those could penitentially improve our well being.

Stress is often very personal and hard to define, so for the purpose of this presentation i will give a definition that i found which I think captures what stress is pretty well.

Here it is,

According to Medical News Today, we generally use the word “stress” when we feel that everything seems to have become too much – we are overloaded and wonder whether we really can cope with the pressures placed upon us.

Without a doubt stress has been affecting all of mankind throughout history. Examples of stress can be seen from past political leaders such as former president of the united states, Theodore Roosevelt, to more recent public figure like actor Jack Nicholson and of course stress can also be seen in our community from students over and over again.

In 2008, the Associated Press and mtvU conducted a survey on college student stress at many different colleges throughout the United States. The survey found that four out of ten college students reported that they feel stressed often. One out of five said that they feel stressed most of the time. One out of four students reported experiencing stress daily and finally one in ten reported thoughts of suicide.

Now you might be wondering; why am i telling you this?

These numbers ARE scary but, i am here today with a solution. That is to use Music, as a stress coping mechanism.

All of us here can probably relate to some extent with music being a positive factor of our lives. Some people need to listen to it every day while others can go without it for months, regardless of that, the important thing is that no matter what, music will always be widely and easily accessed. Making music therapy extremely available to everyone.

But what is music therapy?

According to the music therapy association

Music Therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship.

So, music is now in collaboration with the field of psychology and researchers have found many different benefits for it such as using it to Promote Wellness, Alleviate Pain, Express Feelings, Enhance Memory, Improve Communication, Promote Physical Rehabilitation and of course, also to alleviate stress.

In a study, PhD, Mona Lisa Chanda, found that music improves the body’s immune system function as well as reducing stress levels. Moreover Researchers at Stanford University have said that “listening to music seems to be able to change brain functioning to the same extent as medication.”

The university of nevada states that faster music can make you feel more alert and concentrate better. Upbeat music can make you feel more optimistic and positive about life. And that a slower tempo can quiet your mind and relax your muscles, making you feel soothed while releasing the stress of the day.

So whether you like Rock, Jazz, or Hip Hop it does’t matter, music is beneficial and as you heard, I am not the only one advocating for this. With all the successful research done into the benefits of music on coping with stress, it is clear that it makes for a useful tool.

So, My advice?

Keep calm and listen to music.

 

“What is an idea anyway? Well, you can think of it as a pattern of information that helps you understand and navigate the world”

-Chris Anderson: TED’s secret to great public speaking

For Chris Anderson a fundamental component of a presentation is to transmit an idea into your audiences’ mind. One main idea, that should benefit the audience in some way, be relatable, and worth sharing. That made me think about what possible topics of advocacy I could chose for my S4 presentation, what IS worth sharing? In a one to one conference with my teacher that i had earlier today, we discussed how I could apply my major, psychology, to benefit this presentation. So, I thought that advocating for a specific stress coping mechanism, (that i will reveal in my presentation), in particular, one that i think is very effective, would be a good idea. In conclusion, I can only hope to deliver my idea effectively on the day of the presentation.

 

 

On Thursday, November 17 our class took a fiel trip to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) to take part in and observe a public open house on the Embarcadero Enhancement Project. This open house was held so that the SFMTA could hear the publics’ feedback on their preliminary design concepts for the possible new and improved bike lane. The proposal is for a bikeway that would run along the embarcadero from the AT&T Park at King street to the Fisherman’s Wharf Area. The bikeway has been designed two ways, the first being that there would be a two way protected bike lane running along the waterfront. The second would be two, single ways lanes running on either side of the road. I thought that the way that the open house was set up was good, because they were proposing these two different options I though it was good how it was an open room where people had the opportunity to walk around and read what was most interesting to them. Moreover, I liked how each display area had a member of the project team standing next to it, they provided a quick summary of the poster or answers to any question that you might have. I think that this gave everyone who wanted to interact, a chance to do so. However, non of the team members presented themselves or specified how they were involved with the project which might have caused some people to doubt their credibility. For me, ti seemed that they were all well prepared and informed on the project. A good amount of people attended the event, I believe that most of them were concerned with either how the project would affect their living or their work. For example, some might have their shops affected because it’s on the project site and therefore they might want to find out more information or discuss a possible problem. Overall this was an interesting experience for me and at the end, I even got to give my opinion on which of the two possible designs should be implemented. Lately in class we have been speaking a lot about freedom of speech, I think that events such as this open house truly display that ability to express that freedom of speech.

I was quickly impressed with the rhetoric that this BBC radio clip chose in order to explained Civil Disobedience. The video used really relevant, great animation that followed what the speaker was saying, giving the audience not only an auditory account but also a very vivid visual image of what was being said. This made the video very easy to follow and intriguing to watch. The finale was what made this video outstanding, the camera starts to zoom out and we see that the animations that I talked about earlier form a full comic strip (see above). That comic strip summaries everything that the speaker talked about and explains ‘Civil Disobedience’. In conclusion, I thought that this use of rhetoric was very clever, I am interested to see if they explain other theories or events in the same way.

(civil disobedience video)

 

 

Firstly I have to be honest, prior to watching the video I did not know that the first amendment applies only when the government is trying to deny your freedom of speech and not when someone from the pubic is. Furthermore I learned that it’s in place to allow the public to criticize and question government actions. I think that this gives the amendment certain limitations. As explained in the video, crash course in politics, employees under government institutes may appeal to their freedom of speech rights in the case that it was violated. However for non government employees it’s a different story, they might not get the possibility to question their boss in court.

Secondly, being in our current political situation, I found it amusing to hear that the type of speeches that get the strongest protection from the 1st amendment are political speeches. There are certain rules protecting such speech even in the case that it is violent in nature or advocates for bad things, some stricter restrictions were later made due to the U.S. vs Schenk case. Although, after recent event it is fair to say that we still allow many unacceptable things to be said in politics.

In conclusion, my opinion is that we should allow for more people across all jobs to be able to execute their right to free speech when it is being violated. Furthermore, i believe that speeches given by politicians and government officials should be thoroughly checked to make sure that the right message is being sent across and that they are not wrongly persuading the public.

(Freedom of speech video )