Chapter 4 Notes

1. Basic Presentation Skills

Ø  Preplanning

¨      Who is my audience? Know the age group, prior knowledge, and demographics about the topic, and what positions or opinions may hold.

¨      What is my purpose? What do I hope to accomplish? What response do I expect? What will the audience learn from my speech?

¨      Where is all the equipment I need? Where will the talk be held?

¨      When am I on the program agenda? Will I be the first presenter? Or the last one before lunch? If I’m first, the audience will be more alert. If I’m last, the audience will be more restless. What can I do to keep the attention of my audience?

¨      Why am I doing this talk? Why are they here?

¨      How long should I talk? Only few people can focus for more than 20 minutes. Shorten your talk so that people will ask for more information.

Ø  Preparing the Verbal Elements

¨      Which of the following statements makes more sense?

Ø  A: wile perambulating in the antithesis of the metropolis to evade the intemperate brouhaha thereof, my visual cortex perceived an ophidian.

Ø  B:  I saw a snake while taking a relaxing walk in the woods.

¨      Although A seems more intriguing, it obscures the underlying meaning.

¨      Remember the 4S formula:

Ø  Shortness: Use short sentences, avoid too many details, and do not talk too long.

Ø  Simplicity: Avoid wordy, lengthy phrases.

Ø  Strength: Use active voice and action verbs, not passive voice and “to be” verbs.

Ø  Sincerity: Convey empathy, understanding, and respect for the audience.

Ø  Three Structural Parts

¨      Introduction: Purpose: to capture the interest of the audience. Hook your audience.

¨      Body: Purpose: to keep your audience interested. They will continue to pay attention if you keep the material interesting and relevant to them.

¨      Conclusion: Purpose: to pull it together.

Ø  Summarize the major points

Ø  Show appreciation for the audience’s attention.

Ø  Allow for few question’s

Ø  Be sensitive to your audience.

Ø  Visual Aid Helpful Hints

¨      Keep slides simple

¨      Make slides in landscape format.

¨      Present data in simple graphs rather than in lists or tables.

¨      Lots of media

¨      Use bullet points

¨      Large text is the best

¨      Use high contrast colors, no light colors or fancy fonts

¨      Use a light background and dark print.

¨      Keep backgrounds simple.

2. Presentation Dos and Don’ts

Ø  Dos and don’ts

¨      DO:

Ø  Relax

Ø  Speak slowly and clearly

Ø  Drop your hands

Ø  Rehearse

Ø  Arrive early

¨      DON’T:

Ø  Turn your back to the audience

Ø  Read verbatim from the screen

Ø  Cover your mouth

Ø  Chew gum

Ø  Play with your notes

Ø  Fidget

Ø  Tell inappropriate jokes

Ø  Say ‘um’ or ‘uh’

3. Basic Technical Writing Skills

Ø  General Guidelines

¨      Be clear.

¨      Use 10 point font size and 1.5 line spacing.

¨      Generally, prefer past tense verbs.

¨      Define any terms.

¨      Present facts or inferences.

¨      Number and caption all tables, figures and appendices.

¨      Proofread and edit several times

¨      Read it twice.

¨      Spell out a number that starts with a sentence.

¨      Keep the leading zero with a decimal.

¨      For long numbers don’t spell them out.

¨      Use the dollar symbol

¨      Watch for significant figures.

4. Proper Use of References

Ø  ABCs of evaluating information offer a useful start.

¨      Authority: is it clear who is responsible for the site?

¨      Bias: what is the purpose of the article? Is it free of obvious bias?

¨      Currency: When was the information created or last updated?

¨      Use sources that have been reviewed by experts.

¨      Secure a peer review

¨      Compare the information found with content from other websites or from reviewed sources.

¨      Corroborate the information.

5. E-mails to your college Instructors

Ø  Email etiquette

¨      Be sure to correctly address the recipient.

¨      Use an appropriate subject line.

¨      Sign your full name and include contact information if appropriate.

¨      Change your sending name to your full name

¨      Keep it brief don’t use one continuous paragraph.

¨      If you expect a response, be sure items are clearly defined.

¨      Use correct capitalization and punctuation. Spelling does count.

¨      Check your work before sending it.

¨      When waiting for a reply, give a grace period of 48-72 hours.

Ø  Example:

¨      I don’t know what is going on with the computer but I have been trying to upload the assignment for an hour now and it will not work. I have to drive to (State) tonight so I wont be able to fix this problem later. I can not files on Monday so you can see when they were last saved and show you them then. I really need this one point. Please consider this.

Ø  Better Solution:

¨      I have been trying to upload the assignment since 6 pm, and will continue to try; however, I wanted to email you this assignment since the deadline of 10 pm is approaching. The system will let me browse and select a document but not do anything when I hit submit. I have tried to use a wired connection instead of a wireless, with no luck. Do you have any suggestions for fixing this problem? Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Egg Drop Challenge Report

Our first major lab in this course was The Great Egg Drop. The class divided into teams of two or three, and chose a country to represent. Alexandra and I were a team, we represented Japan. Each team was responsible for designing and building an ‘egg catcher.’ The contraption should have been able to catch a naked egg from a height greater than or less than 17 feet. The catch? You were only allowed to use one roll of masking tape, and 100 straws.

For the past few weeks, Alex and I have worked hard to create our contraption. Not only did we sketch our design, and build it, we spent some time calculating the egg’s energy and speed. Below are our calculations. We revised our problem definition to: “Our clients’ chickens are laying eggs at heights less than or equal to 17 feet. She is having trouble collecting the eggs because they are breaking once they hit the ground.

We had many ideas on how to design our contraption. At first, we decided to do a funnel design, with a centered basket (pictures below). We had two separate plans for our basket, either we were going to build a straw bottom or a hammock bottom made from tape.

Once we started building our egg-catcher we noticed a few things. First, it made more sense for us to have a square foundation because it gave our basket more support. Then, instead of using just one basket design, we decided to use both for more cushion and support for the egg. 

Finally, we completely disposed of the funneled top to help with our budget and the amount of used materials. In the pictures below, our foundation is composed of for triangles made from straw and taped together. Our basket was created by using straws cut into thirds with a tape drape interior. Lastly, Alex covered our base and top with some extra tape for sturdiness. Our final product is below. Our chicken farmer told us that our design looked like something out of Jamestown, so we decided to call it JTEC (Jamestown Egg Catcher).

Throughout the design process we tried to use as little materials as possible. We did not use 100 straws and we did not finish our roll of masking tape.

For our first test, we used the plum bob to make sure we aimed just right. Alex was our designated egg dropper. However, she was so nervous that we missed our basket and broke our egg. Alex tested her egg dropping skills just a bit more and managed to succeed in landing our egg into our basket unharmed almost every time. She dropped an egg from about 16 feet but missed her first try. However, she learned that in our final test, we would have to put JTEC closer to the wall so she doesn’t have to reach her arm out so far. There is a picture below to show her practice.

On our competition day, everyone was nervous! But, each team did their best and I’m sure our client was pleased. To start things off, Alex and I weighed JTEC and it was 49.9 grams. Then we picked three eggs out of the carton, weighed them and named them. Our first egg was AM and it weighed 60.8 g. Our second egg was MA, it was our heaviest egg weighing 65.1 g. Our third egg was EA and it was the lightest weighing 56.6 g. First, we dropped MA from about 7 feet. The egg landed directly in the basket, with no cracks! Next, we dropped AM from a little less 9 feet and it landed in the basket unharmed! Finally, we dropped our lightest egg, EA, and we weren’t so lucky. EA did not make it safely into our basket. There were no adjustments made to JTEC in-between drops. Below is a video showing our second drop with AM.

Alex and I both worked hard in completing this project. I really enjoyed having her on my team because we fed off of each other’s ideas to create bigger and better ones! We learned that teamwork is the most important thing when designing and creating something to solve a problem. We also learned to be open minded about all of our ideas, which is what helped us to create such a great device.

I had a lot of fun with this lab and I know everyone else did as well! I was very impressed with the other teams as well as Alex and I. Everyone had some awesome ideas, and I’m glad our client was pleased!

CHAPTER 2: ETHICS

INTRODUCTION

Ø  “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

Ø  Every day we make ethical decisions.

Ø  The more you practice analyzing day-to-day decisions from an ethical standpoint, the easier it will be for you to make good decisions when the results of a poor choice may be catastrophic.

Ø  There are two reasons people try to make ethical decisions

1.    They wish to make the world a better place for everyone.

2.    They wish to avoid unpleasant consequences, such as fines, incarceration, or loss of job.

Ø  Each major religion all have fairly brief codes summarizing how one should conduct their life.

1.    Judaism, Christianity, and derivatives thereof have the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments.

2.    Islam has the Five Pillars in addition to a slightly modified and reorganized form of the Decalogue.

3.    Buddhism has the Noble Eightfold Path.

4.    Baha’i has 12 social principles.

5.    In Hinduism, Grihastha dharma has four goals.

2.1  ETHICAL DECISION MAKING

Ø  Step 1: Determine what the issues are and who might be affected by the various alternative courses of action that might be implemented.

o   For example: Whether to allow cutting down acres of trees to build a new shopping mall.

¨      The issues

Ø  CO2 footprint

Ø  Quality of life

¨      The stakeholders

Ø  habitats that were formed in the forest

Ø  traffic

Ø  Step 2: Consider the effect of alternative courses of action from different perspectives. (Consequences, intent, and character).

o   For example: Should middle schools have a Sexual Education class? (consequences)

¨      Stakeholders:

Ø  Teachers

Ø  Students

Ø  Parents of the students

¨      Consequences:

Ø  Teach about abstinence

Ø  Could lower teen pregnancy statistics

Ø  Give useful life information and tips to the students.

o   For example: Should social media have an age limit? (intent)

a)    Should everyone be a certain age in order to have a social media account?

b)    Should there be a law so that anyone under the specified age and has a social media account be approached?

c)    If you were a parent to a 12 year old girl, would you feel comfortable giving her the freedom of social media?

o   For example: Walking down the street you see a homeless person without proper winter attire. Everyone else on the street is just passing by him. Do you: (character)

a)    Stop and give him a coat or blanket

b)    Ignore him, pretend you don’t see him and keep walking

Ø  Step 3: Correlate perspectives.

o   It is in good nature of ethical decision making that different people will often arrive at different results in good conscious.

Ø  Step 4: Act.

o   If you believe that working on a project poses no threat to your soul, then little courage is required to follow through, since your career may blossom.

o   If you believe that the project you are working on is unethical, you will need to change the minds of the management or refuse to work on it, both of which can risk your job.

2.2 PLAGIARISM

Ø  Claiming someone else’s work as your own.

Ø  Plagiarism is labeled as academic dishonesty.

Ø  We should not live in fear of being accused of plagiarism because our brain drug up something we read, saw, or heard of in the past.

2.3 ENGINEERING CREED

Ø  As a Professional Engineer, I dedicate my professional knowledge and skill to the advancement and betterment of human welfare, I pledge:

o   To give the utmost of performance.

o   To participate in none but honest enterprise.

o   To live and work according to the laws of man and the highest standards of professional conduct.

o   To place service before profit, the honor and standing of the profession before personal advantage, and the public welfare above all other considerations.

Ø  In humility and with need for Divine Guidance, I make this pledge.

2.4 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILTY

Ø  Is the ideology that an individual has an obligation to act to benefit society at large.

Ø  As a profession, we recognize the importance of this trust in the Engineering Canons and the engineering creed that define our standards for ethics, integrity, and regard for public welfare.

Ø  In your opinion how do an Engineer’s ethics affect public safety?

o   An engineer with no morals, or one who can’t make ethical decisions could harm not only the environment, but the people and animals as well. For example, an engineer wants his company to dump waste into a wastewater system. When it starts filling up, one of his workers says that it cannot overflow. The lead engineer tells him that when that problem happens, they’ll take care of it and not to worry now. He did not make an ethical decision in this case. When the time comes and the system starts to overflow, many lives and habitats are now at risk for radiation, poison and even worse. Engineers with no ethical standards affect public safety in every circumstance.

National Society of Professional Engineers:

National Engineers Week starts February 22 and ends February 28. Eweek was founded in 1951. Eweek is dedicated to increasing interest and knowledge about the engineering career. Eweek raises awareness about engineers’ positive contributions to quality of life. Throughout the week before and after, there are different programs held.

Changing the Conversation: This program encourages more effective communication to the public about engineering and engineers. The goal of this program is to encourage young people to make a difference in the world through an engineering career.

DiscoverE: In this program, engineers help grade school and high school students discover the worlds of engineering and technology. They relate applications of math, science and engineering to real-world situations.

New Faces of Engineering: This is a recognition program. New faces of engineering highlights the unique work of young engineers and the impact on society. The engineers are working to solve problems on a global scale. The engineers are 30 years old or younger.

New Faces of Engineering, College Edition: Every fall, College Edition promotes the accomplishment of 3^rd 4^th and 5^th year engineering students.

Future City Competition: Future City works with over 1100 schools. The program challenges middle school students to design a city 150 years into the future. Each team of three started with their imaginations and SimCity software, with this they would come up with astounding solutions to everyday challenges.

Global Marathon For, By and About Women in Engineering and Technology: The Global Marathon provides opportunities and a place to put forward ideas for women. This marathon encourages women to ask questions and teach themselves about women in the engineering field.

The Deep Dive:

July 13^th 1999, abc News did a report on a company called IDEO. In the beginning they show the “normal corporate workers day.” They say that it’s a bunch of stiffs sitting at a desk with alert minds and tireless machines doing the same routine every day. In other words, they are probably not likely to invite anything. IDEO shows a different side to working. They don’t discriminate based on your title or how long you've been with the company. They bounce off everyone’s ideas and everyone’s opinion matters.

The company was faced with a new project that needed to be completed in five days. They needed to innovate the supermarket shopping cart. The project leader is Peter Skillman. He is project manager because he is good with groups and not because of seniority. The rest of the team consists of different careers. Biology major, psychologist, marketing experts and so many more! Safety and theft were the first issues reported. The team splits up to see what the people who use, make, and repair shopping carts feel. They went around to different supermarkets and took pictures of the customers with their carts, and asked customers and the staff questions concerning the carts. They looked at the shopping cart from different perspectives to come up with useful and relatable ideas for the 21^st century shopping cart. Each group came back to IDEO and shared their ideas and everything they've learned to the rest of the team.

Day two is the deep dive! For the next few hours the ideas pour out and are hung on the walls! One idea was Velcro pants and Velcro seats for the children. When questioned about the idea, Dave says that you have to have some wild ideas, then you’re supposed to build on top of those wild ideas and they end up being great ideas.  “If everyone thinks the same and appropriately, you’d never have any points to build off of for a really innovative idea” says Dave. A few hours later the team narrowed down the ideas by voting on them. “Enlighten trial and error, succeeds over the planning of the lone genius” says Parker. This statement pretty much sums up IDEO's approach. At 6:00 pm, the team is ready to show their prototype shopping carts. There were some very interesting ideas the team came up with. One idea I personally liked was having an item scanner on the cart to keep track of how much money you’re spending. I think this could be very helpful to shoppers. Other ideas were personally calling for assistance from a worker at the supermarket through a little microphone, piling hand-baskets in a cart, a high-tech cart that gets you through the traffic at checkout, and a cart that is based on child safety. Many great ideas were made and carried out, let’s see what happens next!

It’s the final day of the shopping cart project. What do you know? They designed the entire cart in a day, then took that cart and fabricated it in a day. The cart they built costs the same as your average shopping cart, but looks and acts different in every aspect! Hand-baskets are stacked in a metal frame, there is a handle that ‘straps’ the children into the seat, the carts wheels turn 90 degrees so the cart can move sideways, and they saved the scanner idea from the prototype.

I think the team did a very good job with this project! They succeeded in making a low-cost 21^st century shopping cart. I think every new aspect that was added to the cart is useful and helpful! I loved the way their team worked together, and how they did their work. I like that they don’t discriminate based on your title or seniority. Every opinion and idea matters to this team and I think that is what keeps them going.