Something about Presentation

Sorry about the late post since I didn't look through the to do list thoroughly, I missed the time to submit this post.

This semester I started with a new team and a new topic, then everything rolls back to the very beginning, rationale,objectives(maybe not necessary). Website has different function to face to face instruction as the learning process to me is all about skipping rather than focusing. The traditional learning would always have one focus, the teacher's presentation but the websites flatten the focus and make it a larger view.

For instance, in the past, I would remember clearly what the teacher's said about what to do in a week since my concentration worked with the only focus but now the written list sometimes caused left-overs because my concentration can not adapt to that properly yet, always skipped some important information.

Since the websites can not talk to you, and they are not lineal, nor concentration-oriented, we need to make full use of the other functions to fulfill better presentation.

Our major project in this semester is "helping IST Master Students' Career Plan".It is a practical topic for most of us in the R541 classroom. Our audience are very limited to IST current master students and those who are interested in IST. They are professional, down-to-earth and curious about the future. So we have a thousand ways to ruin the topic but only several correct ways to present it well. I should say, it is hard.

We need the following to make better presentation to our rare but precise stake holders:
1. Clear but useful message.
   Though we don't regard us as information provider, we still have to provide some information to the visitors of the website.They don't want to see tedious facts but useful message they can find within several seconds. e.g. "Welcome to IST master student career plan. Career plan is important for all of us.You can see the success of IST students start from good career plan."is a very horrible example that make people want to skip. We provided too much known information but almost zero new message.It is better with"Hello!In the career plan website, you will see..."

2. Authority
   It is not news that people doubt the validity of the information on websites.But we still need the grasp the authority sense in our website. It is not easy to keep authority but we would strive to keep the data collection authentically,exclude corrupted interview records and always use validated facts. Then we won't lose our authority in the presentation phase. In a word, presentation is all about convincing people with your authority in one field.Don't ever lose it!

3. Resources we can provide
   We would use much connection to the resources in the project and it is one of our major purposes. The more we can provide, the more attraction people would have from us.People would listen to you and believe in you, when you really have something good to say.

4. Sincerity
    I should say it is the basic ethic of presentation. If we don't have much good things to say in the presentation, it is not fine but people could understand our limitation, hopefully. But once you cheated and caught in your presentation, you would feel even worse when everyone leaves you and you would face with various punishment based on how serious the situation is. Presentation can be selling, publicizing or something else but not swindling.

5.All about skills
   Yes, when we fulfilled all the obligation above, the rest parts are all about skills.Skills are so broad to talk about here.Using color, Layout, Headlines, Banners, Video, Music,Picture cropping, Font, Bold, underlines, hyperlink, flash...

Few of us are born to be excellent presenter.Learning and practice can make us as good in the end!
   

My two infographic topics

I had several ideas about infographic topics, and I will share two of them with R541 classmates. They can be primary or even naive, but please forgive they are merely ideas.

1) 10 longest air line routes:

   I had this idea to find out longest air line routes, for long, as early as when I saw the movie"Inception" around two years ago, in which movie the hero would make use of one of the longest air line routes, Sydney to LA, which is almost 10 hrs, to steal the dream of a rich person...
   I found some digits on Wikipedia but it shows the longest non-stop route currently is the one between Singapore and Houston(The former longest was that between Singapore and New Jersey)operated by Singapore Airline.Additionally, I found none of prior example by google searching, so I would put it at my first topic.

2) International Student Health Insurance@IU (using recommended insurance or find another<e.g. ISO's>)

    For many international students like me, buying health insurance is compulsory but it takes time to decide to choose recommended insurance products or to buy some outside products. The consideration can be the insurance fee,coverage, security, each time payment and overall ranking, etc.The recommended insurance is more expensive but saves time to think about it. The outside ones would cost you more on each time you see a doctor, but if you stay healthy, you can save half of the insurance fee at least.That would be amazing to visualize these facts.

My example of Infographic and principles of infographic

I found this infographic via google research with the key words"religious infographic" at http://visual.ly/one-nation-under-god.

A female bartender(representing the atheists ) and six customers of different costume(the structure of which looks similar to that of "the Last Supper" by Leonardo Da Vinci)

It is the most illustrative and interesting infographic I have ever seen because the message it used is very straight--costume and color. In this way, I don't have to explain much about the content of the infographic but my understanding of the essential elements or the principle of a good infographic.

1) Must be supported by facts and digits. To build up a infographic, you need a idea first and then the facts and digits, or you can not call it a infographic.
2) Exaggeration of the color and other visual element to some extent. In this example, proportion makes more sense than the exact amount, so their columns' colors are darker than that of the exact amount to get more impression. Since we know ordinary religious people would not dress like that, the designer's using clergy who do dress like that would be kind of exaggeration(and putting them in a same bar and sitting shoulder by shoulder is even more surrealistic...)
3) Using abstract items, or even icon. To avoid too complicated structure for viewers to follow, the designer should simplified the elements used in an infographic. Here, we can see the designer didn't use much facial information(except the bartender's exotic Asian face) which is less relative to religious affiliation but the costume information that is tightly connected to one's belief.
4) Cutting off surplus groups. An infographic can not contain all the groups, so the designer should decide which groups are more representative. Here we didn't any minor schools of Christianity or other religious groups as they are maybe less representative, less known and just have smaller communities. 

Repost:R541 Weekly Posting: Week 1(Jan.7th-11th)

I have to change to this blogger since the former one would mislead dearest Hoosier Buddy with non-English instruction... Anyway, this one is for everyone in R541 community!

Original Address: http://guomintian1984.blogspot.com/2013/01/r541-weekly-posting-week-1jan7th-11th.html

Hello everyone in R541:

     Good to see you here! I created this blog 5 years ago but I only posted once previously. Sounds like a long time ago, doesn't it? Since the middle of 2009, most of google products have been blocked in mainland China...so blogspot.com looks like a long lost friend to me, which was given the name by myself(?), briefly translated as "Settled, Curious, Patient & Extensive"（in Chinese: Anming Qiuzhi, Jieji Bowen）. 
      
      Well, I need to say something about myself. My name is Mintian Guo, a second-semester master student of IST@IU. I am from Shanghai, China, the city of which is extremely populous(6,500 km square for 18 million residents+7-8 million long-term residential migrant people, among which 170 thousand are foreigners). For example, my town alone is one-third of the size of Bloomington but there are as many as 3 times people living there... 
       
       Because of the family-planning policy of China(not att's family plan but a neutral expression of "birth control"), I am the only child of the family. Since childhood, my parents have been giving me most care, funding as well as restriction, which made me quite different from those who grew up in a more competitive and liberal context which made me feel lonely most of the time when I needed some partner(s).
  
       I graduated from East China Normal University with a BA degree in Teaching Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language, from which I learnt much about linguistics(language learning and acquizition, pedagogy) western and Chinese Culture, Contemporary/Ancient Chinese Literature, English/American Literature... what remain in my short lists of interests. My minor major was applied psychology, so I always hold the passion for that field.

       During the 5 years between my graduation from ECNU and arrival at IU, I was a high school English teacher. The reason why I chose that job was very complicated and since I already quit that one, I think I don't have to explain it any more:). But I would appreciate my former employer who gave me a chance to be an exchange teacher in Denmark for 10 weeks, which experience I would remember forever as I have great time in that kingdom of fairy tale , as well as many other European countries where I traveled during the Danish festival.

        Everything so far is positive to me in IU. I love IU, B-town, school of Education, IST, professors and classmates. I have almost zero cultural shock here. Last semester I took R511, R521 and Y515(Inquiry Methodology by Dr. Phil Carspecken, abstractive, challenging but good for your view of the world). In this semester I will be in R541, R561, R620 &R685.

        Hope everyone can enjoy our learning "journey"(quoted from Dr.Haynes)