I’m not gonna hide it. The presentation that I had when I met Mrs. Haag this week was terrible. No animations, nothing. Just a dump of haphazardly thrown together pictures. No transitions between slides. A deplorable color scheme. After editing for a week and thanks to the incredibly helpful comments that Daphne, Rema, Kimy, and Mrs. Haag provided, I think my slideshow is in much better shape.
To me, an ideal PowerPoint is one that adds to, not distracts from, your presentation. Originally, I had no animations on my PowerPoint, and I found that I was projecting ideas and bullet points before I had even gotten to that point in my presentation. Animations were great tools, they allow you to project bullet points as you go and help the audience to follow along with your speech through your presentation, rather than be distracted by it.
I feel pretty confident about my overall presentation and script. I think that the editing process as a whole has been great and the past week has really helped me to improve both my script and my presentation. Even though I have practiced it, I am a little worried about my speech being a little too long because many times I hit very close to the 15 minute mark. But, like everyone else, I think, my biggest concern is actually standing up there and giving the presentation. I just don’t want to mess up, so I am using different tactics to help me with my speech. The first thing I did was write down a list of bullet points that represented the flow of the main ideas within my speech. I then memorized this list, rather than my script. Then I familiarized myself with my script. Now, when I practice my speech, I try to use my memorized list and my familiarity with a script to “improvise” my presentation.
I found a cool little trick that was super helpful. I recorded myself saying the speech, and when I was busy doing something else, I just put on my headphones and listened to myself speak over, and over, and over again. It was a little painful at first, but it did a VERY good job in helping me remember my material.
I think our presentation is pretty different from our Seminar presentations. Our Seminar presentations were essentially our literature review and did not have the same complexity that our Research presentations have. We have a lot more moving parts in our Research presentations, because we have to articulate the similar arguments we had in Seminar along with our methods, results, and discussion. Also, Seminar was a straightforward solution-problem argument and presentation. In Research we have a more complex structure where we show a problem, then go into detailed about one solution (which is our research) and argue for why it works and helps fix the problem.
Overall, my biggest fear is just messing up in front of an audience. But I know that with two weeks of practice, that will not be very likely—but it still would be a possibility. So.I can’t wait for it to be all over.
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Gursajan -- this was a great blog post! Thank you so much for all of your insights. For example, I love your little "trick" of recording yourself. That's something I might suggest to people in the future, as I agree that it's a good way to continue passively preparing. Moreover, I really like your note about the presentations having a much more complex structure than the simple problem/solution structures in AP Seminar.
ReplyDeleteI know we had some bumps during today's practice presentation, but I'm confident that you'll be able to KILL it on the final presentation, so long as you continue your level of thoughtfulness.
Hey Gursajan! It's totally ok that you felt a little rusty with your presentation skills before some people helped you out - I think a lot of us probably needed a push in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to echo Mrs. Haag in saying that I hadn't thought about recording myself, but it actually seems like a really good idea. Kudos to you for knowing your strengths and knowing how to make sure that you're the most prepared you can be. I also like how you emphasis the point that it's not about memorization, it's about understanding the flow of things so you can "improvise" well.
Good luck!
Hey Gursajan! I think that the more you practice, the more confidence you have! And that trick of recording yourself sounds kind of awful, but I know if I don't do it, I'll totally regret it. Also you are so right that Research compared to Seminar has so many moving parts and not that much more time.
ReplyDeleteI think having a bulleted list as well as kind of a basic idea of a script is a great idea! Your presentation is going to sound organic and flow really well! Just remember that you know the most about this topic and we dedicated a significant portion of our adolescent lives to deep dive into our research! Trust me, right now you know more about anime and its significance than most of the U.S population that hardly knows what it is ("Japanese cartoons??"). As long as you keep up the consistency and work ethic I know you have (your Seminar presentation was awesome last year!), you're going to be golden. Golden Gursajan. Goldsajan. Gurgold. ok, I'm done. TRUST. YOU WILL DO GREAT.
Gursajan!
ReplyDeleteI really feel you when you were describing your initial presentation with no animations and a bunch of pictures and no transitions! Because that was mine too! It’s always good to add transitions between slides, and within slides, if you have multiplepoints to make, which I also learned with Mrs. Haag! I think you’re so right about an ideal PowerPoint, and it’s definitely good to add more text in the AP Research presentation compared to the AP Seminar presentation. Also I’m glad that you feel good about your overall presentation and script. Editing has been a really long and arduous process, but we are done with that now! Just work hard on memorizing the presentation! Practice every day! The recording yourself sounds like a great idea! It’sll be all over soon! I total believ ein you!!!!!!!!!!!! (137)