Critism on team presentation ( Abhishek Bholah )

The team in general

I think it was a pretty good attempt for a first try.We did not make use of any additional materials despite we were having the difficulty which word to use but finally we managed to do so.It could have been much better concerning the body language and the communication skills.We could not grasp the audience attention due to lack of confidence in our team and we were unable to voice out our opinion.We were having difficulty taking actions that stretch our comfort zone or feel even slightly uncomfortable even if we know that will improve our life. However we have a long journey to go still have a lot to learn from our mistakes.

Criticism on personal level

I'm rather shy. And when it comes to crowds larger than a group of three people in total, I'm unable to voice my opinion - mainly because I am largely outspoken -. I forget it within seconds while the conversation continues and I await for an appropriate gap between words so that I can voice my opinion. Also, I have a large dislike toward yelling for speaking too softly.Concerning the body language it could be much better, It's all about breaking out of my comfort zone. Focus on small things first like eye contact and volume, and over time, you'll naturally become more confident. Practice is really the only way to go.

Summary for lecture 1

Effective Communication

To communicate implies sharing of information between 2 or more parties which can be done by various means. For communication to be effective, the informations to be shared must be completely understood by the recipient. 

The recipient : The one to which one is communicating; the one receiving information.

Having effective communicating skills is helpful in many different ways. Most of the benefits are seen in applied situations such as the workplace, in daily life, in social life and so on. Furthermore, it can also increase you intellectual, problem-solving, decision-making skills along with increase ones' productivity.
It also help to breach the communication barrier between you and your recipient so that ideas are shared correctly and result in concrete results.

There are various reasons why one should communicate effectively. Firstly, to be up to date with the latest technologies around us such as the internet, mails, fax, and so on. Moreover, being able to exchange information effectively also helps to be globally connected (with other countries). Most importantly, this aspect is crucial when it comes to communicating between members of a team to which one belongs to; for instance at the workplace where one has to work in team of several members.

Usually people either communicate by oral or written means.
In oral communication, we share information by talking. Common examples are presentations, one to one meeting or conferences. On the other hand, non-oral communication involves usually written information exchange by different means. For example letters, newspapers, forms, E-mail and so on, are common means of non-oral communication.

Choosing one of these means of communication is important so that the requirements of the information to be shared are met. These are based on different factors such as the speed at which information needs to be passed, the expected response time, the amount of information to be shared among various others.

In the workplace there are different types of communication based on the way information is shared. For example, "vertical communication" is the name given to communication between different levels of jobs. Other ones include horizontal communication, diagonal communication and grapevine communication.

Criticism on team presentation

Name: Satveer Bhantoo

Link to video (video is private, please log in to blog account to view the video)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7JfmZ0qLCtrJ1FQ6aXczYA/videos

The team in general

Starting with the positive points; in my opinion it was a good first attempt. We did not use any additional aid such as Paper or notes during the presentation. Also, we had much less difficulty with memorizing the key aspects of the sketch that we actually expected. 

Things we need to work on a lot include our body languages and our presence in the presentation. We did not have the audience's attention during the sketch because of many reasons. Firstly, we were talking to softly, the dialogues (the way they were written) weren't very interesting and I think we somewhat lost the audience's attention at some point.

Most importantly, we lacked co-ordination and the plot a bit messy!
Next time we will do our best to improve on these points as a team!

Criticism (on personal level)

Positive: I wasn't as bad as I expected I would be. I spoke as loud as I could as an attempt to show self-confidence. I tried to cover up my teammate who was in a lot of trouble with the speech so that the presentation doesn't go in an awkward silence. Indeed,  writing "No to prejudice" on the board was not planned, it was actually improvised.

Negative points: I had some problems with my pronunciation and was not speaking fluently enough. I was making too many hand gestures, maybe out of nervousness. There were many instances where I forgot what I was about to say, and lastly, forgetting (again out of nervousness) a team-member name. 

Kind regards,
Satveer

Abhishek Bholah

Hello there,

My name is Abhishek Bholah, also known as Rambo for some of my best friends. After completing my school certificate at DR Regis Chaperon SSS, I was transferred to a state college, namely Sir Lekraz Teelock S.S.S to complete my higher school certificate. I enjoy keeping myself up to date whether it is my operating system or technologies such as the tangible user interface, use of haptic in different environments and application of pervasive computing in our real world. 

I'm studying first year BSC software engineering at university of Mauritius. Unlike many people in my age who have a hard time figuring what they want to do in their life, I have always known exactly what I wanted to pursue. Since I was a young kid, I have been fascinated by the way engineers are able to solve technical problems that affect every aspect of our society. I have always had an interest in science and technology, and despite the fact that many of my friends are not taking interest in this field, I have always read, in my spare time, about the new invention and the evolution of these new technology available nowadays. 

 Personally, I am interested in becoming an expert in networking and work as a cisco engineer. I’ve always preferred networking to programming. Due to the job prospect available in our country, I’ve chosen to complete my degree in software engineering. In addition according to statistics Mauritius is looking for 30000 It professional and entire world is looking for billions IT professoinal.  There is huge demand and industry gap for software engineers in java, .net, Oracle.  Now our future is based on these technologies plus one latest and hot in demand "Cloud Computing".  IT is just like OCEAN endless, so its our motive to learn the future technology and became a solid pillars for my country in the field of IT.   However, there are many different career opportunities. I believe that a job should be like a hobby.  It is very difficult and requires a tremendous amount of patience and hard work. I hope that I'll be able to meet these challenges, and that my dream will come true. Well, I have to stop thinking about how hard the task is going to be or how long it’s going to take me. 

Just get started!  Not starting is failing!!!

Moreover I love going to gym because of the social enrichment:  the way people is trying to improve their health and setting a goal to lift a certain weight and achieving it is a great confidence booster for me.

Coming to my strengths.

My strength is hard work because without hard work we cannot get any success as it is said that there is no elevator to success we have to take the stairs. My strength also includes my family who always motivates me to achieve my goal.

My life style is very simple. I'm interested in many things such as music, reading poems, and watching horror and romantic movies. I am one of those people who do crazy things. Something pops into my head in the moment and i am there doing it. I love this about myself and often the people around me think it's great too as it can often lead them into adventure too ... and making them do crazy things.:D

 I love nothing more than to get in my car and drive with no particular destination in mind.  When I get tired I will stop and have myself a rest and enjoy the beauty of whatever small town i have ended up in.  I love Mauritius and I love to adventure my way across it. At this point in life I have a lot of opportunities and chances. I used to say no to everything and everyone but now I have broadened out, and do try to take everything I can. I am a curious person, if I don't know something I will try to find it out, if I don't know where somewhere leads I will go there. I enjoy living this way and I'm learning to take on the saying of "No regrets". ;) “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on”. –Robert Frost

Satveer Bhantoo

Hello readers.

My name is Satveer Bhantoo and I'm currently studying software engineering at the University of Mauritius. I'm live at Camp-Ithier, Flacq and I studied at Camp de Masque State College at secondary level. 

My passion is music since my childhood times. At the age of 12, I started to start learning music from a teacher who taught me the basics of guitar for around 1 year. After lots of patience, I was able to play simple four chord songs and play simple guitar solos. However after a little while playing Indian music, I started to get bored because I found Indian (bollywood) music to be very simple and not very challenging. I was already listening to Metal and Rock music before I actually started to be interested in learning how to play them. If I'm not mistaken, the very first rock/metal band I listened to was Linkin Park (at that time it was a rock band). The complexity, at that time, amazed me and it was a challenge for me to start learning to master this new type of music. Unfortunately, I did not have the right guitar to play the genre I wanted to; hence, I asked my parents to buy a new guitar for me. It was not that easy though; I was promised the guitar under the condition that I get good grades for my SC (School Certificate) exams. Meanwhile, in parallel of studying hard to achieve my promised reward, i crafted my acoustic guitar into an electric one using pickups and a computer software. I must say, it turned out pretty well. Hence in 2010, I started to finally play some blues and some simple rock songs and even do the popular guitar solo from the song "Hotel California" from the Eagles.

In 2010 I performed the song "Nothing else matters" by Metallica, which is a very famous romantic ballad track by the metal legends. The track was sung by Mr.Chumroo, who was then, my physics teacher who has been a great inspiration to me as well as to many of my friends who are currently studying in UoM as well! He taught us to depend on ourselves at a very early age and to love learning. I tried to apply this to everything that I was learning, whether it is music or academic studies. In fact, we came to know him after him having been our project supervisor for the science competition organised yearly by Rajiv Gandhi Science Center, in which we finished first runner up among various other star colleges. It was an impressive achievement since we were the first group of student to have ever brought this prestigious award to our college.  

As promised, I received my guitar in 2011, even before the results came out because my parents and I were confident that I did well in my exams; and I actually did pretty well. From then, I started to learn much more complex songs and face new challenges. I started by trying to play a lot of metal songs from various bands such as Metallica, Bullet for my Valentine, Guns N'  Roses, among a lot of other bands.

In 2013, as usual we had our plans of performing for the music day. However this time I wanted to have a single performance on any song. Seeing that there was an Indian song from the movie "Aashiqui 2" that was being on top of Bollywood hit charts, I decided to make a cover of this song, from start to end on my electric guitar. Luckily, one of the teacher (known as Diksh Potter) who was working at my school caught me practicing and recorded a video of me. He uploaded this video on youtube. To my great surprise, this video got very popular and a lot of students in my school started to know me. It gave me a lot of confidence seeing lots of positive response from other people from different places about the music that I play.

You can always have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipgDz6YYS0g 

Since my father knew my passion for music, he asked me whether or not I wanted to go to India or do I prefer a new electric guitar. My answer was obviously the second one! In November 2013, we bought my current guitar which is a steve vai (famous guitarist)  replica Ibanez guitar. Since then, I have been extensively practicing hard on many new Metal, Rock and Alternative Rock songs. I'm currently learning an practicing much more challenging songs such as those from the bands Avenged Sevenfold, Dream Theater among others.

Apart from being a music passionate, I also like playing and watching football. On a weekly basis, we usually arrange matches against other teams in my locality. My team consists of mostly people from my huge family. I am a huge fan of Arsenal, since I was 7 years old because that time it was the invincible Arsenal; the team that was undefeated 49 matches in a row. I miss those times because Arsenal currently is not at the best that it was more than 10 years ago! But as a die hard fan, I support Arsenal whether they are winning or losing!

That's all for now!