Our guess speaker on Friday 2/13 was Chris Cheung who is Tara’s assistant and works under the department of academic technology services. In class he gave a presentation on what makes one powerful and captivating to the audience. As future senior consultants, one of our roles is teach workshops. Workshops whether they be public or consultant based, are an important part of the Stony Brook community. There are workshops on everything from excel to resume formatting to word and much more. The key point to a powerful presentation is being prepared ahead of a time for anything that can happen. If you know that you are going to use hand outs in your presentation, make sure to have enough copies for everyone. Dress to impress and have confidence when you are speaking. If you’re holding a formal business meeting bring the appropriate dress wear and don’t be afraid to speak out. Remember that you are in control of the show and people are listening to you. In order to engage the crowd make sure you know what age group you are dealing with and be prepared to answer questions. Maintain eye contain with everyone if it’s a group presentation. A good tip that Chris gave us is that he sweeps the room back and fourth with his eyes so that he can see everyone. If you feel that people are not  paying attention then you can ask the group a question such as “does this make sense?” or “can someone give an example?” By asking questions you make sure that people are paying attention and are listening to what you have to say. All of these tips and tricks will help us as senior consultants when we have to talk and present to other students such as at boot camp, site meetings, and workshops.

In addition to power presentations, Chris also went over how to create well quality supported documents. He explained the standard format that TLT senior consultants use when creating handouts for their workshops. Chris also provided us with documentation on common errors that occur  when creating documents. Making words bolded or italized help to emphasize a point and pictures help to make explanations easier than just a big paragraph. The information he provided will become very helpful when we as future senior consultants teach our own workshops.

Outside of the TLT class on friday, this week was always the first week of site manager and help desk shadowing. During my site manger shadowing with Erika and Celia we over the different responsibilities between the two. For example site managers schedule students for temp weeks, print out class schedules for remote sites, conduct site meetings and much more. Help desk aka student technologists answer questions in regards to various technical issues such as solar, blackboard, and clicker connections. These technologists usually answer questions through live messaging, phone, and email. While shadowing the two senior consultants we also went over the different SINC sites on campus and the senior consultant assigned with each site. Danny is in charge of Main Library while Victoria is in charge of NRR1/NRR2/CRR. Celia is in charge of SBS while Erika is in charge of Engineering. My TLL shadowing hour with Jenney consisted of going over the professional staff that is in charge of various departments in DoIT. For example Paul St Dennis is he media coordinator, Jorge Lee is in charge of hardware, Jen Jaiswal answers questions in regards to Blackboard, and many more. I also learned from Ryan about making phone calls and how there is also a help desk located on the hospital side.