TTALKxReflecting
Today was the day. I woke up, definitely feeling ready. I had been rehearsing (for what felt like 2000 hours) the night before right before I went to bed. My whole day went very smoothly, which was very nice as it mentally prepared me for a great presentation. As last period swung around, it was finally my TTalk on innovations to save water.
In the past, my computer has turned off in the middle of a presentation, so I made sure before hand, that this would not happen this time by checking it out in my computer's settings. I hadn't known this previously, but I learned that the default settings on my Mac allowed it to go into sleep mode after two minutes of the computer being untouched. The presentations where the computer mishap had to happen were not failures, but learning experiences. Because of the mistake, I now am prepared for my future presentations, knowing that this won't happen again. This thought of having "Learning Experiences" can expand past just my one technology error. It can even relate to you, reading this. When you 'Fail' or mess something up, you shouldn't be put down and upset from it. Know that it can be a growth point that you can learn from and improve from next time. There is always something to learn from a mistake, and I can proudly say that the one person that has encouraged me the most to embrace mistakes would by my I & S teacher, Mrs. Daniel.
Anyways, I was telling you about my presentation. Walking away from the front of the classroom, I was genuinely happy with what I had produced. Yet then again, I wasn't the one watching my presentation, so how would I really know how I performed? Well, my teacher intelligently decided to film a video of each and every presenter, so we could go back individually and watch our presentation, and reflect on it. As an International Baccalaureate school, students always reflect on an assignment afterward. I will be giving a detailed reflection of how I personally thought of my presentation, right here, in this blog post.
Firstly, I will say that I am proud of my TTALK, but there were definitely some problems. I spoke clearly with eye contact and was grounded as I was talking. I think that my content was extremely detailed and all of the work that I put into the presentation was evident though all of the facts, and descriptive detail in my presentation. As I was watching my presentation, I am very thankful that I opened up to the audience at some points, as well as included some jokes because, to be honest, for some of the class, the vast amounts of information were boring. When I asked if anyone knew the amount of water Spain recycles, I think I made audience engaged again after they may have zoned out while I was talking a lot about drip irrigation.
In terms of the PowerPoint presentation displayed as I was speaking, I think the slides that I had related to the topic and collided with what I was saying. If I had used the clicker instead of looking back and pressing a button on my computer each time I changed slides, I think that my presentation would've gone smoother during transitions. I was the first presenter, so I didn't have the opportunity to use it because it was not working at the time, but for the next time I present a talk like this one, I will ask the teacher a couple days before to make sure it is connected to the computer and working. One thing that I found made my presentation less professional was the wording of some parts. Because of the pressure to not look down at my notes, some of the sentences were improvised, and I put the wrong words in the wrong places. An example of this would be at the beginning when I stumbled in my opening sentence and said, "My name is Leah, in case you already don't know" instead of "My name is Leah in case you don't already know." When practicing at home in the future, I will definitely make sure to prevent this and maybe do a form of "Mock presentation" to my family, before I present to the class. One thing that I included in my presentation that I encourage all of you readers to include would be pros and cons of an idea. Speaking on behalf of different perspectives that you may not agree with definitely involves critical thinking skills, yet can be easy to accomplish if you follow these four steps.
1. Ensure that the point you are speaking about is a valid topic that you can actually talk about.
2. Write down the main points of all of the paragraphs BEFORE writing the full paragraphs.
3. For each point/main idea, write down a list of pros and cons. (This may require some research)
4. There you have it! You now have different views that enhance your presentation and make it seem much more developed.
This is exactly what I did, and as I was listening to my presentation, I was much more intrigued than I would be if I was only hearing "Half of the story". The benefits, but not the complications.
The last part that I think really stuck with my audience would be my concluding sentence. I gave the audience something to think about after I finished speaking. It was not too specific but still related directly to my topic. To be honest here, I did actually search up on the Internet how to form a valid concluding sentence and that really helped me. The article said that the concluding sentence should always give the audience something to think about or question at the end of a presentation. My concluding sentence (or two!) was said as follows: "For now, I can try to conserve as much water as I can, and thank the inventors of these innovations because they have helped Israel so much. Maybe one day you will be a proud inventor of an invention that relieves the world of all of the sustainability issues that we have."
I found the concluding sentence very sophisticated and allowed my presentation to end on a high note.
By the way, when I said, "In the future, I will..." above in my reflection it doesn't necessarily mean 40 years from now. I am talking about from now on. It could be tomorrow when my reflection helps me improve on something in a completely different subject, or maybe in a week, or maybe in a month.
Finally, there are so many skills that I learn at my amazing school that I will definitely be able to input in my life after graduating. Some of them in include: Reflecting, inquiring, and critical thinking, just to name a few.
Tune into my next, and final blog post for my takeaways from the whole project, and how I felt/what I learned watching others' presentations.
Thanks for reading!
-Leah