Practice Presentation in Groups (Sep. 1st)

This morning, I woke up extra early to go over my presentation for an extra boost of confidence. I had originally thought we would be presenting on the first class back from holiday, so I think it is safe to say I am prepared or have done the most I can do at the moment. When I first started hearing rumors that we were not presenting, I was absolutely devastated because that would mean more practicing for the next class. However, after taking today's class, I have come to the conclusion that I am glad we had had this lesson today. First, because I've practiced innumerable times I probably will not need to practice as many times as I did this morning on the day of the presentations. Also, the group work and advice-giving activity we did in class was very essential and helped me quite a lot. I was able to give my honest opinions and advice to my teammates which hopefully helped them improve their presentations, and learned a lot from them as well. 

My presentations were originally around 9 minutes and knowing that I speak very fast, I decided that was an overload of information and was not satisfied by the content of it. So, what I did was bravely cut a few whole sections out of my presentation which cut down the total speaking time to 7 minutes. However, a problem that emerged was the lack of description in certain areas. For example, I had decided to cut down my plot quite drastically and by doing so, I had unconsciously made the presentation much more confusing and hard to comprehend. I only spoke about bits and pieces of the book which as a reader made total sense, but apparently was not understood until I gave further explanation later on. Also, some of the pictures I used in my slides were closely related and corresponding pictures to the book. These features of my slides that I had thought would decipher what is being said had in fact done the opposite thing which was something I would have never figured out on my own. Another multitude I had was our face masks. Depending on the type of face masks we used, the clarity was excessively different and all in all was hard to catch the speaker's words. My speakers had a huge misunderstanding of the whole plot because they heard me say "Sat" when in reality I said, "Sipped". The last thing I want is for my face masks to interfere with my communication, so this is something I would really like to be aware of when I present! 

Overall, being given the opportunity to present in front of a live audience really helped me feel more prepared and will probably be big support for me, internally when presenting. Knowing that there are a few people in the audience who have already listened to your presentation and given you maximum advice is reassuring and encouraging. 

notes: 

Hirofumi Miki (Lord of the Flies)

fidgety, 

clear slides, all text in the left top corner

why use those pictures, choose one big picture for each slide

A summary of the book is in detail.

how the text moved into different categories, very visual

pros were strong and abundant, and you focused on both the 

"one last thing" a picture of the popularity

my turn:

some pictures need more explanation

kind of took out a lot of plot, misunderstanding of words

they liked how I related the book to real life

Keiichi Taketsuna

nice slides, very big text, I like how you chose a font and stuck to it throughout

very clear pictures, high pixelation 

introduced an interesting episode utilizing pictures

negative points were very strong, which I think is a good thing, being honest and acceptive