Good evening. Before I reflect on my Genius Hour presentation, I wanted to offer a big thank you to everyone that has been following my blog since the beginning of this journey. Your views, feedback and support have helped me succeed in accomplishing my goal of not only completing this project, but doing the very best I could with it and challenging myself to search for insightful answers.
Now, lets talk about what went well during my presentation. I feel that I was able to successfully engage my audience throughout the presentation. I created a visually appealing PowerPoint, which, for the most part, had minimal text (just the key points) and an abundance of pictures. I was also compelling during my presentation, where I spoke confidently (without reading off a script) and with plenty of passion/interest for my topic. I also gave my audience members an opportunity to share their thoughts by posing a question for them to answer in the middle of my presentation. The research and information I included in my presentation was detailed, accurate and relevant to my topic, which helped the audience understanding my thesis. Lastly, I did a good job of analyzing my successes and failures both in my blog posts and in my presentation/final product. I was able to express these clearly to my audience, through my use of bullet points and corresponding images.
I also want to discuss what didn't go as well as I hoped during my presentation. My three biggest issues were my speaking pace, my time-management skills, and the lower than expected audience participation. I feel that, although I spoke confidently and passionately throughout my presentation (as mentioned above), I spoke too quickly (because I was a little nervous). This may have resulted in my audience not being able to hear/understand all the information I shared. I also went slightly over the time limit (approximately 3-5 minutes) while presenting. Consequently, I may have lost the audience's focus during the last section(s). When I posed a question for my audience to answer, only one person volunteered to respond. Initially, I was hoping to get two or three responses. This indicates that not everybody in the audience was paying attention to my presentation at all times.
In the future, I plan on rehearsing my presentation more often ahead of time, in order to regulate my speaking pace. I will also do some deep breathing exercises and use positive affirmations to calm my mind right before presenting. That way, I can speak at a more relaxed and natural pace. To solve my time-management issues, I will create a lesson plan for my presentations that will outline exactly how much time I intend to spend on each slide/point/activity/section of my presentation. I will also use the lesson plan while I rehearse, as it will provide me with a time-frame for speaking. Finally, to increase audience participation, I will try to employ different engagement techniques (such as "think, pair, share") multiple times throughout my presentation. If people continue to be slow to respond, I will call on those who seem comfortable with the topic and engaged in the discussion to share their ideas.
Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of this project. I learned so much and feel that I have drawn significant conclusions based on my research. I also believe that I engaged my classmates (to a satisfactory degree) in the topic I chose to explore, primarily due to my passion and insights.
