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1) I am delighted to see this interest in helping students become professional and polished in their presentations. At high levels in any organization outside academia (which may encourage less formal interactions in order to encourage students and not intimidate them), presenters are expected to be able to speak effectively before audiences in precisely defined time allotments--often anywhere from 3 minutes to 10 minutes to 20 minutes to the traditional 50 minutes of a lecture. Preparation is essential so that whatever amount of time one is given, a clearly presented message with whatever supplemental materials--today nearly always digitally presented visuals--are needed to reach the audience to which one is speaking. It is often hard for students, who have always been accustomed to demonstrating the depth of their knowledge to their historical peers and professors, to speak "without their footnotes showing" to a lay audience. Learning to speak in a public presentation like an accountable expert is a major shift in thinking from being a student whose nurturance and training is the central focus of most academic exercises. Whatever mental tricks one can utilize (imagining a member of your target audience looking over your shoulder as you write, or whatever), thinking through possible questions that your presentation may raise in the audience who expects you to know the answers, and timing the talk in advance, utilizing the visuals to make certain the technology works--all these things are crucial. Audiences are quickly lost when the speaker hasn't a clue how to make the technology work or clearly hasn't considered the expectations of his or her audience. All the effort a public historian puts in to learn substance is lost if he or she can't communicate that substance effectively to the audience it needs to reach. Victoria A. Harden, Ph.D. Founding Director and Special Volunteer Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum vharden@comcast.net www.history.nih.gov ----------Original Message----------- >I am curious about what professors of public history do to train their >students to develop good presentation skills, an essential ingredient >of success in public history. > <snip> > >Darlene Roth, Ph.D. >1620 Longbranch Avenue >Grover Beach, CA 93433 >darlene@darleneroth.com -- H-Public To post to the list: H-PUBLIC@h-net.msu.edu Home page: www.h-net.org/~public sponsored by the National Council on Public History (www.ncph.org)
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