Week 7 – Project Planning & Presentation Skills Development

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Group Project Planning

JKO Dynamics (Group 1) did a good job planning for the video project. Through a zoom call we planned out the structure of contents. We also decided to use PowerPoint, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Premiere Pro, along with supplemental AI to enhance the visuals in the video. I’m happy with how our group handled this project as well as many projects before. As of right now, one of my team members has uploaded part of his presentation and he did a phenomenal job as a speaker. I’m hoping to be able to match his level of professionalism.

Lecture Material

This week’s lecture material emphasized the importance of presentation skills. This skill is crucial for presenting to colleagues, subordinates, boards, and customers. The modules this week included examining TED Talks and creating effective PowerPoint presentation. The lecture also covered visual aids to enhance presentations by being colorful and unique. However, it also indicated that they should not overshadow the speaker or be used to avoid audience interaction. The lecture this week also covered the grading rubric for the video project. It will evaluate presentations based on content/organization, audience engagement, production quality (video and audio editing), collaboration, appropriateness for the audience, and question and answer.

Something I found particularly interesting in this week’s optional lecture was the material on deepfakes. The linked article discusses synthetic media or "deepfakes," hyper-realistic video and audio created using AI, which can convincingly make people appear to say or do things they haven't (Whitaker, 2021). The U.S. government is concerned about the misuse of deepfakes for spreading disinformation. Experts emphasize the potential impact of deepfakes on the media, and the ethical challenges they pose. I’ve personally seen the rise of deepfakes in recent years. Though it’s mostly for comedic purposes, I do acknowledge the potential dangers of this technology.

References

Whitaker, B. (2021) Synthetic media: How deepfakes could soon change our world, CBS News. Available at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/deepfake-artificial-intelligence-60-minutes-2021-10-10/

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