Call me stupid

[lady007]

I need some serious help! I have a term paper and a PowerPoint presentation that ask me to write an essay on my community and speaker notes on the PPT. Who do I go about doing this and what do I write in the speaker notes. The class is about how Puerto Ricans are treated. I live in a very diverse community. I treat everyone with respect, and never had a problem. I can't really say I've seen too much discrimination. If anyone understands or needs more detail in order to help, please ask, I can use all the help I can get!

[Shannanigan]

Speaker notes are fairly easy to write, once you've figured out what you are going to speak about. I highly suggest that you do some research about the area you live in to see if the treatment of Puerto Ricans is a bigger problem than you've noticed. Perhaps newspaper archives (I'm thinking microfilm) at your local library ban help...or even ask the librarian since they tend to know a lot about a community. Sometimes we block out instances of discrimination because we aren't the group being discriminated against...look around you and pretend that you only know Spanish...are there Spanish translations of signs to help you? If you ask someone for directions, are they more likely to try to help, or be annoyed that you can't speak English? Would they perhaps pity you...and would you be offended by that? Often groups from the same place will live close together in one neighborhood (diaspora is the word, I think)...is there a neighborhood where you live where you see this happening, and is it avoided by non-Puerto Ricans?

Once you figure out what you are going to be talking about, speaker notes should just contain keywords to remind you of what to say. If you are going to show a chart plotting the incidences of violence against Puerto Ricans in the past 10 years (not gauranteeing you'll find that, but this is for example purposes), and you want to say "this spike in incidences of violence three years ago coincides with the year where immigration from Puerto Rico into this area peaked," then your speaker's notes (flashcards?) might say: "SPIKE 3 YEARS AGO IMMIGRATION" or something like that.

Practice your presentations many, many times...so that you won't look at your speaker notes and have no idea what to say. Hope this helps, good luck!

[mono]

Shannanigan had some very good suggestions worth considering for you, lady007.
Personally, if I have a speech or presentation to give, after doing some research, I organize everything, configuring what I want to present, in what order, the introduction, the transitions from subject-to-subject (so as not to lose my audience), and the conclusion. With this information, I map everything out on an outline, write them on notecards, and take them with me to the place of presentation for reference.
Powerpoint, I will confess all honesty, confuses me. If you give this presentation for school, depending on the school, sometimes they have various reference offices who can help - maybe in any library, computer technology instructors, etc.
I wish you all the luck, regardless, and if you have any more questions, feel free to always post. ;)