An interesting presentation

As part of my PhD, I attend some courses at the Sanger Institute.

Got an e-mail about a course called "Developing Science Communication"... very long back and was given the choice to join. I said yes.

Developing Science Communication course was a very interesting one as it was tapping the creative side of people and showing how it could be used to communicate science effectively.

Day One of the course was a starter to make us think of the different ways of communicating science, the audiences we might have to see, etc. On Day Two, we were to do a presentation on topic of our interest to an audience of our choice. I chose to present my research on "The Meta-analysis of Platelets" to a "Group of Biology Teachers who have come for an update".
The major clause of this presentation is we are not allowed to use Powerpoint.

I started my presentations with how heart attacks occur for which I made two blood vessels (made from the tissue roll cardboard & paper mache) shown below:

Blood vessel without atherosclerosis


Blood vessel with atherosclerosis

(Atherosclerosis is the deposition of materials like lipids and cell debris on the vessel wall.) The blood vessels get constricted due to this deposition also known as plaques. If the plaques rupture then the platelets, the smallest but second most common anucleated cells recognise the rupture and form a clot which may lead to a heart attack. Thus, platelets play a key role in the progress of the disease.

Then, I went on to speak about meta-analysis & to demonstrate the use of meta-analysis we played a round of bingo. BINGO was special as it has words rather than numbers - thanks to http://www.saksena.net/partygames/bingo/ - you can put in your own words & make the bingo sheets. So I printed 30 such cards with words related to platelet biology. I made chits of my word list. So we played a small game of bingo and demonstrated the fact that more the number of chits, more is the chance of winning - an analogy to more the number of sample, more associations of variation can be obtained.

The presentation was ok...well it was fun. The best part we all got some cool gifts ...I got a heart that can be used as a hand warmer, see below:

But today i.e. a week later when I got a video of my presentation, I got embarassed to the core ! I saw the video with my guide and I couldn't help laugh at the way I was speaking!! I hate my voice and how many times over I say that I feel it wouldn't be enough.

Anyways, the course was fun and a new thought process has trigerred in my mind...let it go on...shall discuss that same at a later date...