Page 361 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

328 Part 3 Putting Theory Into Practice

few students who want to share their love of wine with students,
including samples of their favorites. For obvious reasons, fi rearms
are prohibited on our campus (except for those carried by campus
police). So too is alcohol. Thus we insist that our students tell us
in advance both their topic and any objects they plan on using in
relationship to it.

Photographs

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. You may want
to use personal photographs or those taken from another source
to illustrate an example or as a complement to a point you make.
To be effective, a photograph needs to be seen. In most cases this
This photo enlargement allows the
audience to see how an artifi cial heart requires that a photograph be large enough to be seen by audience
fi ts in a human hand. members in the back of the room as the student pictured here did
using overhead transparencies.
For an actual photograph, enlarge and dry-mount it on poster board or foam
core. Digital images need to be projected electronically. This usually is accom-
plished with a computer connected to an LCD projector or video monitor. If
neither of these suggestions works for you, you can also enlarge a photograph
and copy it onto an overhead transparency.
Slides are problematic. To be clearly seen, 35 mm slides require a special
projector and screen. The main problem, however, is that slides must be shown
in a darkened room, which impedes the audience’s view of the speaker. It also
makes the speaker secondary to the slide show, which is the opposite of what we
want to happen.
If 35 mm slides are essential to your speech, we recommend that you import
the slides to a computer or have them transferred to a CD-ROM. Then you can
use a computer linked to an LCD projector or video monitor and show them
without having to turn off the lights.

Models

A three-dimensional model of an object may be used when it is impractical to
use the actual object or a photograph will not do it justice. One of our students
spoke on the common American cockroach. Bringing live cockroaches to the
classroom would have been disconcerting, to say the least. Instead, she cleverly
constructed a large-scale model of a cockroach that she kept hidden in a box until
just the right moment—when she revealed the topic of her speech. Not only was
her speech informative and entertaining, it was also enhanced by her ability to
explain her subject vividly using the model. Another student spoke on fl y-fi shing.
Tying a fl y with actual fi sh line would have been invisible to the audience, but the
large-scale model he constructed out of coat hangers and yarn worked perfectly.

Selecting the Right Medium

Whether a speech calls for a photo, a diagram, a chart, graph, map, or simply an
outline of points, speakers today have several choices of presentational media.
Before discussing PowerPoint, let’s begin with the oldest and most readily avail-