If you can remember, last year there were huge headlines on the outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa. The disease was widespread in the area and even infected some Americans and Europeans. From the news, I gathered that the disease was incredibly dangerous and if it were to spread to us, could create chaos. Although just a few people were infected here at home, American media created a sense of panic with little scientific backing. Therefore when I saw the Ebola poster at the session I was curious to see how the group would interpret this sensation that quickly faded in the minds of Americans like myself.

The poster itself was very attractive with helpful pictures, bright colors and little writing. I learned about its origin as it was originally found in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The 2014 outbreak was explained in pictures but also through the members of this poster group. Hosted in bushmeat (wild game) and lack of proper hygiene and knowledge on modern diseases, Ebola spread unknowingly and infected people rapidly and in high numbers. I learned that people were afraid to seek treatment causing the disease to spread further than anticipated.

Effective, concise and appealing, I think this poster was a success. Although I did not see in depth personal research or analysis, the major points were all there in a cohesive manner. Any questions I did have were answered by one of the poster members. My only critique would be the grammar and spelling of the poster. To reach the level of sophistication expected, I would hope that silly mistakes like those would be edited out of the final copy. Other than that, it was a great poster!

This past Sunday, as you all know, was the Macaulay Poster session in the city. Going into the poster session we had our own preconceived ideas on how or what a poster should look like based on our discussions and feed back during the class. This, and also how we should be pitching our posters, what kind of dialogues should be happening between us and those interested. As a whole I think a lot of people did a really good job, but as we talked about in class a lot of the posters just had so much writing. Interesting how a crucial detail we made sure to avoid, lots of people included. Again, this goes back to how the professors of each class explained what the poster should look like. However, I did think lots of people were very engaged in their discussions about their posters regardless of how much writing was on there.

Aside from all this there was one poster in particular that caught my attention. The title of it was “WHO NEEDS PSYCHOLOGISTS when you’ve got teacher.” (Yes the Caps lock was on purpose!) I believe the poster had dealt with and talked about the relationship between the number of psychologists in a given area and the number of ADHD cases diagnosed compared to the number teachers diagnosing and recognizing ADHD in students. The content itself was impressive and very interesting but it was the elements of the poster that really drew my attention from the start. I believe a very important aspect of the posters are titles. Titles are usually the first things that are read and can be a pretty persuasive factor in determining, who, and, how many people will ask for a pitch. This poster did just that, an interesting title written in a unique way,

In addition, this poster from a Brooklyn college group, had many of the key elements we were talking about. Pictures, graphs and a nice variety of color. I still think there was a tad too much writing, but the presentation was so well done I didn’t have to read the poster!

Very Well done.

When I had was walking around the room looking at the different posters I had originally wanted to look at a fellow Brooklyn College student’s poster, but the “Ebola Explained” poster lured me in the moment I was near. This poster was right next to the poster I was looking at and a student who was presenting the poster immediately began to make a pitch towards me so I would be willing to vote for their poster.

I honestly believe that these students had one of the best pitches, since they lured me in with a simple joke about ebola. The student presenting made the poster very entertaining by starting off with the story of Tim, a man who had gotten ebola.

He even referenced over to the Measles poster while they presented about ebola, which I thought was pretty funny, since it was as if they were trying to sell me on another project that I should have taken a look at.

The majority of their poster had consisted of diagrams and photos to go along with the facts of ebola. They had mainly explained the what the different diagrams meant and how it related to ebola, which showed how knowledgable they were about their poster. They were also able to answer questions I had about their images and since the student was so lively about his project I really enjoyed hearing and learning about his poster.

Although they did not do actual hands on research like most of the other posters, the students were very dedicated about the poster they had done and wanted student’s to know that ebola is something people shouldn’t be worrying about due to its unlikeliness of spreading, and since vaccines are in the making and seem to be effective so far.