Session 3

John Tan-Jones

05/03/2009

Today we started by doing some reasearch into our chosen subjects and as mine was the Kingsgate centre in Huddersfield I took a look at their website and at the reasorces that they had made available for reaserch.

Kingsgate Centre

I had chosen the Kingsgate as it is an prodominent building within the Huddersfield skyline that can be seen when entering town near the round about. The information that I gathered from the website pointed out how it was part of the community by bringing more trade to the town, attracting custom that would normally go to places such as Bradford. I looked into the facilities and shops that it provides and found a multitude of information on the center and its facilities.

I then went on to read about a further development that is going to take place called ‘Kingsgate 2′ that will add another 120,000 square foot of new retails stores onto the centre (room enough for 5 major stores) and also give a new hotel with 80 beds in it which will create new job oppertunities within the town. Another 360 car parking places are also going to be made taking the total car parking spaces to over 1000 at the Kingsgate centre.

I then started work on a powerpoint presentation that would hold the information so I could present the information at a  later time to the rest of the group. As I’ve had past experience with the software I had no problem making the presentation with custom animantions for each slide. I deceided not to add any music as I thought that it would detract from the experience and that I might not be able to get through the presentation as quickly if I did add music to the presentation.

I might of chosen a different project if I had known the limited information that I would find on the centre itself as their website was the only sourse of information that I could find so there wasn’t much independant bias on the presentation.

I also finished doing the presentaion early (it was ready before lunch) so I had time to update this blog to where it is currently and now I’m just waiting for the session to resume after lunch as I mentioned on my last blog post ‘Session 2′ the lunches do seem to be over a long period of time with not much to fill it with after we’ve eaten.

I’ve just presented the presentation and I think that it went reasonably well though I did have some failings. I started the presentation off by ralking about what it used to be like before the Kingsgate opened then moved onto what happened to the town after the shopping centre was opened. Then I was able to list the facilities within the centre like the car park and the toilets. I then went onto say how the centre has been a good place for job creation, I also mention this later in the presentation when I talk about the \Kingsgate 2 project that will make 5 major retail stores and an 80 bed hotel. After that I gave a quick overview of the local competition that the Kingsgate centre has then I did an introduction to the Kingsgate 2 project. I then explained how the centre would have a good effect on local business by drawing more people into Huddersfield and how it would permit Huddersfield to compete foe custom frolm places like Bradford and other towns in the Leeds district. I then sis a quick summery of this and how it was good for teh prosparity of the town.

I think that I failed whilst delivering the presentation as I did not makek good eye contact with thet audience which is essensial when making a presentation and I hope to improve on this for future presentations. I also need to hold a smaller note pad or memerise more of the presentation so I can make that vital eye contact with the audience when I need to.

Session 2

John Tan-Jones

04/03/09

The first thing was to fill in a University form so we can get passes to use the university reasorces. Then this seesion we did an interveiw with other members of the group to get to know each other better so we won’t be as nervous when doing presentations. We then did a basic computer introduction and had to fill out a quiz about computers for a basic computer qualification. We then we’re shown some examples of presentations which should help us with ideas of how a presentation should generally look when we are making our own presentations. We then each picked a subject that we wanted to make a presentation about that is local in Huddersfield and went out to take pictures of our chosen subjuct to add to our presentations tomorrow when we create them.

Kingsgate Centre

After that we created wordpress accounts and wrote this blog that should help us keep track of our work and also permit our work to be marked by the people who mark the work for this course.

I think that the information that we have leared today will help me on the course especially the presentation and communicational skills as we will be using them tomorrow. The communicational skill will also help to improve confidence with people (when talking to them/presenting items infornt of them) and as this course is IT based I believe that the computer skills will come in useful as the course progresses.

I found the waiting around a bit challanging at lunch as it is a long break and I had nothing to do for it so I ended up waiting for what seemed a long period of time. I’m not too sure what I can do about this at the moment as I dislike going outside but I may bring a form of entertainment to use whilst waiting.