Week 7

 Final Research Video Project Planning

This week my group began working on the final for our current class. The final is a video presentation on quantum computing, and will cover the basic principles, history, applications, challenges, and future prospects of quantum computing. There are two videos, a longer one aimed at professionals, and a shorter one aimed at general audiences. So far this was our biggest project by far. Because of this, we saw some challenges that I think we can learn from.

For the most part we collaborated through voice calls, but we also messages each other to communicate. We have been meeting at least once a week, and meeting twice a week if required. We have been using Discord for voice calls, messaging, and file sharing. 

For smaller projects, this process has worked incredibly well. Typically, meeting in a voice call is enough for us to finish or designate rolls for small assignments. We knew that this wouldn't work for a large assignment, so ahead of time we assigned which parts of the video presentation we would work on. A few days later we met up again to finish the professional video presentation. Finishing and polishing the slides took much longer than we expected. What we expected to finish in a couple of hours took over four, and we didn't record the video the same day as we expected.

When we do large projects in the future, I think we need to be more comfortable with delegating tasks and doing them outside of voice calls. This would give us more time to work on group projects. 

I think we should also be more comfortable with communicating through messaging. Some assignments or tasks we handled in voice calls, when we could have easily handled them through messaging. This is fine when we only have smaller projects, but when we have both large and small assignments it could lead to assignments being overlooked. Using both messaging and voice calls for assignments would help us avoid overlooked assignments.

TED Talk

This week we watched a TED Talk of our choice relating to computer science. I chose to watch Quantum Computers Aren't What You Think - They're Cooler by Hartmut Neven. I chose a presentation on quantum computing because that is the topic my team's presentation.

The video cleverly uses analogies to explain some of the principles of quantum computing, such as by comparing bits and qubits to coins, and framing superposition as the qubits being in multiple, parallel universes at once.

The presentation also discusses some of the applications of quantum computing. For example, it discusses a sensor, or artificial nose, on our phones that use quantum computing to detect substances. Some examples of this it gives is detecting harmful chemicals in the air, allergens in food, or high oxidants in the blood.

I think the approach that the presentation took to explain the principles and applications of quantum computing to general audiences was incredibly clever. As my group begins to make our presentation for general audiences on quantum computing we can take some lessons from this presentation.

Life After Death by PowerPoint

This week we watched this hilarious presentation called Life After Death by Powerpoint by Don McMillan on Youtube. The presentation presented advice on what not to do in PowerPoint in humorous ways. This advice includes:

• Don't have too much text on any or each slide.
• Don't have too large or small font size.
• Don't use strange or distracting fonts.
• Don't use too many bullet points.
• Don't use too many graphs or graphics.
• Don't over-animate your graphs or graphics.
• Don't include too much information on graphs or graphics.
• Don't include strange or distracting graphics.
• Don't overuse acronyms.

Visual Aids and Props

 This week we read a page called Visual Aids and Props by Toastmasters International. The page gave general advice on using visual aids and props:

• They should be interesting, but not distracting.
• You should make sure to make eye contact with the audience instead of looking at the props.

The page also detailed several visual aids and props that are useful for presentations, and how to effectively use each:

• Diagrams, graphs, and charts should go along with the speech, and you should make sure to make eye contact with the audience.
• Maps should be simple, and clearly marked.
• PowerPoint slides should contain short sentences and bullet points, and should not be read word for word.
• Lists should be short, no more than six items long.
• Handouts should be handed out before or after a presentation, but not during.
• Photographs should go along with the speech.
• Physical props should not be too large, small, many, or few.