Last Blog

In the beginning of public speaking, I had many goals. Some of them were to get over my fear of speaking in front of an audience. Others goals were the basic ones like annuciation, pacing my speeches better, and stuff like making my speeches interesting for the audience. I wanted to be able to speak freely and confidently, without making mistakes or slipping up when I'm talking. I also wanted to be able to write a good speech. It's not easy to capture the audiences attention but that's what I wanted to lean. Posture was another important factor. I wanted to be able to stand still and look confident when I was speaking. These are some of the goals I had for this semester of public speaking.
When it comes to all these goals, I think I met a good amount of them. I know there is still tons of room for improvement. First, when it comes to pacing, I struggled with that for the most part but I felt during the end I slowed down and improved a little. I was always aware that I speaking too fast and I tried to tell myself to relax and slow the pace. Along with pacing would be volume. I noticed that I would start off loud and then quiet down as time passed. I felt I met this goal because I heard myself get louder through my recorded videos. I noticed I started off the year speaking really fast and quietly and near the end I was talking at a slower pace and I was louder than before. When it came to the idea of making my speeches interesting, I noticed that it was pretty consistent and I could have done a better job of adding more emotion and excitement to what I was saying. I don't feel I really improved in that category as much as I would have like to.
Something that I need to work on was the monologue that we did and we needed to add emotion to it. I felt like I didn't have any expression and no excitement to it. When it comes to acting for the monologue, I did a pretty bad job. Thats the thing I would work most on. Among all of the monologues and speeches, I would say I am most proud of the final Ted Talk speech. I felt that I spoke clearly and paced well(thanks to the teleprompter), and my content wasn't too bad. I thought I had some good and clear points about my topic. There was stuff I could have done to improve it but I felt overall it wasn't bad.
I could take away many things from this class about how to be a good public speaker but I feel the main idea would be to always be confident I what you are saying because even if what you say makes no sense, if you seem confident, others will respect and trust your opinion. That is something I definitely have to work on because I don't feel as confident as I should be. I learned that when your confident with what you are saying, everything else like pacing and annunciation comes naturally, which is really helpful for me. This is why I want to improve my confidence level.  This is main thing I have learned from public speaking class.

Blog on Ted Talk

Ted Talks are hard to pull off. Your content needs to be entertaining and catch the audiences attention.  When figuring out what to say, you must be a little creative. You might need to add some humor or interact with the audience by asking them some questions to keep them interested. It's not that easy to keep people attentive when you are talking for 5 minutes. As humans, we have a short attention span so the only way to keep the audience excited to add some fun to your Ted Talk. Adding humor and excitement is some things I feel my Ted Talk needs. I feel that I am just rambling on about what makes a good leader and just telling people facts. That is one of the main things I need to work on.

Along with adding excitement to it, I need to have a stronger hook. The first sentence you say is the one they are paying the most attention to so it needs to be interesting and you want to make them listen to you. Other ways of keeping the audiences attention is by adding visuals, which is something I should put in my speech.

When concluding the Ted Talk, you want to include the takeaway for the entire speech. Now this is really important because it's basically the moral of what you are saying and your explaining to the audience why it is important. My topic is what qualities make a good leader and I do explain step by step specific qualities that will lead towards leadership, but I feel I need to make it stronger. I need to really explain why leadership is an important skill to have because it will help you later in life.

Overall, I feel I can add some excitement to my Ted Talk instead making it sound like a boring speech, and make sure it catches the attention of the audience. It can also try interact with the audience by maybe asking a couple of questions her and there. The takeaway is also something I need to work on. This is what I feel I need improvement on.

Ted talk draft

     Becoming a leader is something that is a challenge to most. It doesn't come overnight. There are many characteristics and qualities that are needed to become a leader, and they aren't simple to be honest. These type of qualities take time and practice to be used effectively. There are actually many qualities that are needed, but you don't need to have all of them. The list can go on and on because there are endless qualities that are needed but obviously it's impossible to have all of them. As long as you have the important qualities that are needed to become a strong leader, you will be set. The following qualities are the ones that I feel are the most important and will allow you to succeed.

The first quality and not necessarily the most important one is communication. Without being able to communicate with people, you won't get anywhere. There are 3 ways to reach people and catch their attention. Pathos, Logos, and Ethos. Pathos is reaching people through emotion. Connecting with them through a story, family, or something that is comfortable. The second way is through logos, which is facts and statistics. This is the most effective way to connect with people because it's hard to disagree with facts. When people hear numbers or information that appeals they agree with they will listen to you. Lastly, ethos is used to reach people through their moral and ethical views. If you beliefs match up with the majority of people around you, you will get more followers who trust your opinion which is the ultimate goal. These are the 3 ways to communicate with people.

These next qualities are more about who you are as a person. Are you someone who's trustworthy, dependable, motivating etc. There are many of these qualities that are needed but the ones I will be talking about are the key ones. The first one, honesty. This is a fundamental quality that is needed by all leaders. Being an honest person branches out into many other qualities like trustworthiness and dependability. If people see you as someone who is honest and they know they can trust, they will start depending on you and listening to you. The more people that listen to you, the stronger you
become as a leader. Next is intuition. Intuition is having the ability to know what to do in pressured
situation. "leaders have to draw upon their instincts, past experiences, and mentors for help in these complicated situations"If a crisis is placed in front you, being able to handle it smartly and effectively is a valuable quality because once you show you can handle difficult situation, you will seem reliable and dependable.

The next 2 qualities are consist of the type of leader you want to be. When people think of leadership, the normally feel someone taking full control of a situation. Everyone is doing whatever that individual says because he or she is the leader. That's not always true. A big quality of becoming a leader is being open to change. You need to allow others to express their ideas and feeling. Shutting out everyone just because you think you are right isn't the smartest step in gaining leadership. It's definitely hard because we all want to think our ideas are the best but a little help can never hurt. The next and probably most important one which many haven't heard before the risk taking. Leadership and risk taking don't seem to be topics that match up but surprisingly they do work well together. In order to be a powerful leader, you need to be able to take risks. You need to step out of your comfort
zone and trying something different. This is the strongest way to capture people's attention. You need
to experiment and try something new. You can't succeed by staying on the safe side.

To conclude this topic, becoming a leader is a process that is difficult and is one that takes a lot of time and patience. The road to becoming a leader requires you to have certain characteristics that all people don't. Leadership makes you unique from the rest, but some people just don't have it and that's okay. We need followers in this world or else leaders would have no use. If you're a follower, be the best follower you can be. The main idea to takeaway from the speech is that's is not easy to be a leader, but time and effort will shape you up to be the strong leader you want to be. Thank you.

Body -Research for Ted Talk

Research topic: What makes a good leader

Source: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/what-makes-a-good-leader

 Communication.
      -Ethos-reaching people by connecting with their values
      -Logos-reach people with logic and facts
      -Pathos-reaching people with emotion
Telling the hard truth
    -a good leader will find ways to tell the hard truth that is hard to hear, and then move on to find a solution.
    -you need to be able to deal with difficult realities, and it is hard which is why most leader struggle with this problem.
    -you can't run away from a problem, and sometimes telling the hard truth my destroy everything but eventually it will have a positive impact.

Source: http://info.profilesinternational.com/profiles-employee-assessment-blog/bid/204911/Top-10-Qualities-of-Great-Leadership-Do-You-Have-What-it-Takes

Honesty
   -people want a leader that they can easily trust. They need to have certain morals and values. You can't have somebody who just says this to please the people. The need to be able to be truthful, which relates to the previous point about talking about telling the hard truth.
   -When the leader is honest they whole group or company develops an honorable reputation automatically.
   -having an honest leaders influences that persons followers or employees to do the same.
Delegation
   - this is really important because trusting your employees do productively do work without micromanaging is difficult.
   -you need to know which tasks best fit that certain employee and give them that job. When you do this, your company will run smoothly.
   - you need to know all the strengths and weaknesses of your employees/followers and manage it from there.
Intuition
   -one of the best qualities a leader needs to have in intuition
   -when a crisis is placed in front of them, the way the handle it is really important. Of course all people make mistakes so your first decision might not be the strongest one, but with time it should get better and you should be making smarter choices under pressure.
   -leaders can use instincts, past experiences, and mentors to help them solve certain problems.
When things aren't working properly, people will look to the leaders to have the right answers for them.
Open to change
a good leader needs to be open to different views and opinion. They need to take everyone's opinion into consideration. If a leader makes all the choices by themselves and shuts everyone out, they won't listen to him/her as much as they should.
Allowing other ideas to come in is also a good idea because someone else might have a stellar idea that you never thought of, which might help your company or group.
Also not allowing others to share their ideas makes you seem like you are better than everyone else which isn't a good quality or reputation to have as a leader.
Motivator
Being a strong leader yourself isn't complete. You need to be able to motivate the people who are following you and encourage them to do good. You need to make sure that your followers are working hard and maybe trying to become leaders themselves.

Peter Pan Review

I thought the Peter Pan play was a wonderful representation of the story. I liked how it was not the  Disney version which was made to please a younger audience. It was the true story of what happened, which I found really intriguing. The directing was excellent because I could feel the emotion going on through the character which was really good. They entire cast of Peter Pan did a good job of bringing the entire thing together and turning it into a wonderful production.

I felt the actors did a great job of showing the emotion and what was going on in good detail, and some characters were really funny which made the play more exciting. On top of that, all the actors spoke clearly and very loud, and there was no trouble hearing what they were saying or not being able to understand it. I enjoyed how each actor brought their character to life by expressing their persons personality through many forms. Along with the acting, the props and costumes really made the characters much more exciting. In the costumes,  there was a lot of detail and the makeup made the character seem more real. The props were great for example the wheel of a ship made that specific scene seem much more real and the movements the characters made when the ship tilted over was excellent. It made it seem like they actually fell over. Also the window in the bedroom showing the night sky was well made and when the characters jumped out the window it looked real in a way.
Going back to the character, I found the dog to be a funny character and I liked how Tink was created by a laser light and some bells, I thought that was really creative. Near the end when Peter Pan started talking to the audience and I liked that part too. It was a good idea to interact with the audience because made it more fun and added excitement to the play.

In conclusion, I felt the cast of Peter Pan did a wonderful job of recreating the story and did an amazing job by making the characters come to life. The added excitement, humor, and suspense throughout the play which made it all the moe interesting. The directors did a great job of bringing the play together and it turned out great.

Ted talk research

Research topic: What makes a good leader

Source: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/what-makes-a-good-leader

 Communication.
      -Ethos-reaching people by connecting with their values
      -Logos-reach people with
      -Pathos-reaching people with emotion
Telling the hard truth
    -a good leader will find ways to tell the hard truth that is hard to hear, and then move on to find a solution.
    -you need to be able to deal with difficult realities, and it is hard which is why most leader struggle with this problem.
    -you can't run away from a problem, and sometimes telling the hard truth my destroy everything but eventually it will have a positive impact.

Source: http://info.profilesinternational.com/profiles-employee-assessment-blog/bid/204911/Top-10-Qualities-of-Great-Leadership-Do-You-Have-What-it-Takes

Honesty
   -people want a leader that they can easily trust. They need to have certain morals and values. You can't have somebody who just says this to please the people. The need to be able to be truthful, which relates to the previous point about talking about telling the hard truth.
   -When the leader is honest they whole group or company develops an honorable reputation automatically.
   -having an honest leaders influences that persons followers or employees to do the same.
Delegation
   - this is really important because trusting your employees do productively do work without micromanaging is difficult.
   -you need to know which tasks best fit that certain employee and give them that job. When you do this, your company will run smoothly.
   - you need to know all the strengths and weaknesses of your employees/followers and manage it from there.
Intuition
   -one of the best qualities a leader needs to have in intuition
   -when a crisis is placed in front of them, the way the handle it is really important. Of course all people make mistakes so your first decision might not be the strongest one, but with time it should get better and you should be making smarter choices under pressure.
   -leaders can use instincts, past experiences, and mentors to help them solve certain problems.
When things aren't working properly, people will look to the leaders to have the right answers for them.
 

Ted talk blog

Ted talks in my opinion are extremely difficult to do properly. You are basically talking to hundreds of people which gives you very small room to make mistakes. Luckily this project is only in front of like 10 people which takes a lot of the pressure off of it, but it still needs to be excellent. There are many categories and qualities that will make a good Ted Talk. It's a combination of strong content, a little but of humor, interacting with the audience, and more. It's not something you can prepare overnight. You needs weeks to prepare what you are going to say, and then understanding how to properly present it. In my opinion, figuring out what to say isn't that difficult, it's how you present it. You might need visuals and something else to make it good. You might need to connect with your audience and ask questions.  As you can see there are many important aspects when it comes to a Ted Talk.

The most important thing before anything else is choosing a topic that is relatable or something that needs a solution. It needs to catch the audience and make them interested in what you are talking about. If your topic is only something that you understand and others don't, the talk will be boring for the majority of the audience. You need to choose something that others can relate or understand. Along with the idea of catching the audiences attention, visuals are a great idea. Even if the audience is getting bored, an image or video will wake them up a bit. Having a PowerPoint is a good idea so they are paying attention the whole time and you as the speaker have something to rely on if you need more things to talk about or you forget something. Picking a topic you are passionate about it good, so you won't come across the idea of forgetting what to say because you already know so much about it.

Along with visuals and PowerPoints, interacting with the audience will keep them extremely interested. I have seen some Ted Talks where the speaker calls an audience member up to the stage and tells them to do something. This will give a lot of energy to the audience and brighten up the mood. Asking the audience questions is good for you and them. You get to interact with them and find out how there thoughts are similiar to yours. If you just rant on for the amount of time you are given without any visuals, interactions or something that excites the audience, people will fall asleep. That's the worst thing because when you realize people aren't listening, you become a bit nervous and it will all break apart. If you have no visuals at all, you could add some humor to your speech. Adding some jokes here and there is a good idea because it will keep your audience interested.

In conclusion, there are many important aspects that are needed to make a good Ted talk, and practice is one of the most importance ones. Along with practice, finding a good topic is equally important. Another thing I didn't mention is annuciation and body language. You don't want to sound muffled and not clear. You want to make sure the audience can hear you loud and clear. You want to make sure that the audience is fascinated with what you are talking about and they want to find out more about it. These are all the things that make a great Ted Talk.