Quinn Ebert

PART 1: Introduction & Speaking Experience

INTRODUCTION:

Quick Note: This paragraph is a copy-and-paste from my previous term’s “All-Course Introduction” — If we’ve met before, you can probably just resume reading in the next paragraph. ;-)

My name is David Quinn Ebert, and I am a 24-year-old Certified Novell Netware (v4.11) Administrator from Greensboro, North Carolina.  I am enrolled in ECPI’s Bachelor of Sciences in Network Security program, in the hopes of giving myself a more solid foundation for my future work-related endeavors.  In my spare time, I enjoy playing video games (I own an Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and Nintendo 64, and of course a computer).  I also enjoy working on my own programming projects (I am most-fluent in Visual Basic, PHP, and Python), and I quite enjoy watching movies (and TV shows) on and from NetFlix.  In addition to all this, I enjoy helping folks out around me when I can, and since computers are “my thing,” I am more than happy to help out folks around here in any way I can, and hope to have the opportunity to help out at least one or two of you, my fellow classmates, with class-related items and issues as we progress through this course.

SPEAKING EXPERIENCE:

To start off, I will mention that as a very young man, my parents had me enrolled in speech therapy.  Whether or not this was really necessary (some people have told me I speak better than most others they know), it might be worth me saying anyway. ;-)  I’m also a bit embarrassed to admit that my last experience with large-scale public speaking was when I was in high school (giving class presentations and the like).  While (like the quote from Seinfeld suggests) I am no stranger to the fear of public speaking, I generally found that once I started speeches, I had relatively few problems completing them (just a matter of getting started with them that’s the hard part).

PART 2: Improving My Public Speaking

My Dilemma: I am legally blind (but can still see well enough to use computers without assistive technology usually being necessary).  I believe one effect of my low vision (and possibly light-sensitivity caused by albinism) is that I tend to close my eyes during speaking to others.  I would love to find out if this is something that I can reasonably do something about, and if so correct this problem.

The Plan: My biggest problem with finding a solution to this issue is that it’s not the thing on my mind whenever I’m speaking (d’oh!) :-D   However, I think the fact that we’ll be concentrating on improving our public speaking in this class will be enough to help me get those few spare extra neurons properly aligned after a while. ;-)

Proving It: Once again, the class itself will provide a method to prove whether or not I’ve accomplished my goal here.  The ability to see myself via the shiny new webcam I bought for use in this course will provide me with a reasonable way to see my own eye motion/contact activity in the speeches we give for this course.

Addendum: Public Speaking from the “Blind” Perspective:

To answer to the discussion’s request for an article regarding public speaking that might be (or, in this case, is) relevant to me, you might wish to read the following:

Woods, Julie. “How to speak from the heart”. That Blind Woman [NZ]. 01 March 2010 <http://www.thatblindwoman.co.nz/wawcs0140493/idDetails=164/How%20to%20speak%20from%20the%20heart>.