2019/2020 LE blogs

Through this semester, my perspectives and thoughts towards presentations, digital tools and the school system completely changed. Before having Mr.Paterson's class, I was indifferent to these subjects. However, as I learned useful modern facts I became more interested. The biggest change was about presentations. Before the lessons, my presentations were so boring since my slides were a script and I just stood and read the words written on the slideshow. I had no enthusiasm to try to connect with the audience. However, if we think again, the purpose of doing a presentation is to tell something to the audience. So first, I learned the basic facts about what I should have done, for example, looking at the audience or not using the slideshow as a script. For better presentations, we learned some skills and tips such as the arrangement/selection of the images in the slideshow or the SPIDER model. There was scientific evidence regarding the use of these so it was very reliable and un...

Today, our group got feedback on our presentation. I had problems with eye contact and the handclasp in front of my body. Looking at the video of the presentation, I noticed that until the solution slide, I was looking more at the audience but after that, I was looking at the screen a lot longer. Also, I wasn't looking at the audience individually but looking at them as a group. This means that I didn't look at the persons at the back and in their eyes. I didn't notice what I was doing with my hands during the presentation but after I watched the video, I found out that my natural resting posture looked a little defensive. The mouth of the group, Mayako had her arms open all the time, so I will try to imitate her. For the slides, we had a lot of problems with the images. In particular, we need to work on the problem of using images that are more connected to the content. There are not many good images that match the topic on free photos websites. This led to using the car...

Today we finished all of our presentations and received our feedback. Overall, I thought the most difficult points were the eye contact and the posture. I found it difficult to focus on the non-verbal aspect of my presentation.  I think, however, that with practice, I should become better at this. I found group six's presentation good today because they moved and focused on one specific topic. Also, having a quote in the one last thing slide was impressive because it's easy to remember and it's a good way to end the presentation. When it was Q&A time, I found that I couldn't think of a question quickly enough so I didn't come up with a good question to ask.  I was surprised when Mr.Paterson said we were going to do the presentation again. I felt tired when I thought about the practice we'll have to do during the summer holidays when there are so many other assignments to do. Although, the only way we can improve the delivery part of the presentation is t...