Sunday, March 25, 2012
Paper Handouts
Although they may seem a bit out of date, I actually prefer when a speaker uses paper handouts during a presentation, particularly when they have blanks that I need to fill out. By having the need to fill in blanks, it draws my attention to the subject at hand as I am listening for the key words that I need. In order for it to not disrupt the flow of the speech, these handouts do need to be passed out at the beginning of the presentation. However, a handout that might be just more informative would be more appropriately handed out at the end of the presentation, especially if it is a repeat of slides or media that have already been shown visually. The downside of utilizing paper handouts is that they are noisy, they can just become more trash to pick up, and it can distract the audience from listening and paying attention to the speaker if they are reading what is in front of them instead.
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It's amazing to me how infrequently paper hand outs are used any more. With technology the way it is, it always seems like the more interesting way to go. But I agree that it can beneficial to use a fill in the blank. However, it can also turn into a doodling pad if the presenter loses the audiences attention. If it was on an interesting topic, it may come in handy later on if an audience member wanted to look further into the topic. I think, like for every speech, taking the audience into consideration prior to the presentation can be a big help. Knowing the room and what kind of audience you'll have can help steer you in a way that you can choose a media type that will be beneficial to your speech (Coopman, 224).
ReplyDeleteAnother issue that could come up with paper handouts is that people in the modern age have just become so accustomed to all things digital. During a speech where people are expecting to see presentational media of a digital nature they might be thrown off a bit by a paper handout. Your reasoning for preferring paper handouts is very sound however. I get exactly what you mean when you say that having papers handed out where blanks are required to be filled in can be useful. Just thing back to our last class meeting where we did the evaluations during our classmate’s speeches. Because we were filling those evaluation forms out we definitely got more out of everyone’s speech.
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