Great Presentations

Recently my AP Literature class had presentations where the students had to teach about certain chapter of the book. Basically everyone had to endure five presentations each thirty minutes long about stuff that people already were supposed to know. So by the time my presentation came up everyone had seen every possible way to be creative with information that everyone already memorized through our annotations of the book.

Great Idea, Small kinks

                In our own presentation my associate and I tried to challenge the class, and force them to think,

DRIIIIIIINK!!!!!!!!

Totally applies to my situation 

 We planned to achieve this by asking questions that you could answer if you read the chapter, instead of just listening to the chapter summary, this made the audience work beyond just parroting the last few words we said. The challenge was well received as it caused our five person audience to pause and actually think hard about the chapters we were explaining, but at the same time the audience wasn’t used to this different approach. With all due respect to the groups before us, during the earlier presentations I felt like I was being spoon-fed pre-chewed food, which is both boring and a little gross. Not that the boredom was the presenter’s fault but rather the blame lies with the information.

            There were moment’s during our presentations where I knew I had lost their attentions, moments where I could have been talking to the air, and for that I blame my presentation style, in the future I would like to make it more entertaining, to the point where I would be willing to dress-up and do voices just to make sure they don’t go back to sleep. I also felt the material of our presentation itself could have been improved if we could have gotten an outside opinion, in the future I will strive to find such opinions.

Also on the list, Propose to Judy Jetson

                I found that no presentation was very interesting, even my presentation was boring to me, that might sound like the whining of a spoiled kid’s, but this project had a lot of potential to be interesting, it was just hobbled by it is limitations the main one being was that none of these presentations informed anyone, because the information was simply not new to anyone who had read the book.

                I think the biggest flaw in this presentation was that everyone already had the information, so as far as informing went these presentations were just a lil’ bit better than that pamphlet on breathing I got for Christmas. 

 You a it's gonna be a bad Christmas when you don't even get coal

People did strive to make their presentations entertaining, but after a while it turned out everyone was just using Prezi & Xtranormal, and that once again made my attention waver. 

            Our own presentations had me looking at our assigned chapters in ways that I definitely did not follow during the initial reading, it made me realize the need to go back and reread the book with such observations. At the same time the presentations also taught me to be more effective in presenting you need to be different, you need to be entertaining, and you need to be correct, those things are crucial to both your credibility & your reception.

 But in that negative the positive shone more, the presentations more than made up of the lack of information, by presenting various points of views to ponder that I honestly wouldn't have thought about because i was too self-assured in my comprehension, and assumptions. So i think these presentations were a great experience with exams right around the corner, but I'm sure if we didn't have the presentations i would be fine.... because i'm awesome

Picture above: Not Humility