2019/2020 LE blogs

 Watching at other people's presentations today, I thought of two things. Firstly, I thought the presenters should look at each member of the audience for a longer time. I gazed at the presenters to show that I was listening, but they didn't look at me at all. I felt a little disappointed because I couldn't feel the presenters' passion. Secondly, in the last lesson, Mr.Paterson told us that we should tell the audience there was no need to take notes before doing a presentation.  However, no one mentioned this today, so I thought they should have said it.

     Today my classmates did their presentations. I realised that there were many handclasps. This might be because the last presentation was nine days ago. On the other hand, the presenters were able to walk in front of the projectors and their time was less than eight minuets, so these are the good points. Other people had found many metaphors and symbolism in their novels, but I wasn't able to find a lot of them in "The Hobbit". Actually, I did find some, but couldn't fit them in my presentation, so I want to include it in the website. Also, Mr.Paterson taught us that if we want the audience to relax and listen to our presentation, we should tell the audience that there's no need to take notes. After the presentation or before the Q&A slides, we show the link for all the documents and slides used in the presentations. I thought this is very efficient because when I'm taking notes, to be honest, I'm not listening to the presenter.

     Today we didn't do our presentations, instead, we created a book review website. This was because until everyone finishes their presentations, the people who have finished would have nothing to work on. In the website, we should put our academic book review, a video explaining the academic book review, author bio and so on. I decided to add a bio of myself, a page for the movie and other related books that Tolkien wrote. To make my web pages fit the atmosphere of "The Hobbit", Mr.Paterson said I should use serif fonts or other old fonts. So I tried to change the font, but I realized that Google sites don't allow us to change the fonts. There was a YouTube video that said I could choose a font from Google Fonts  and change the fonts using the HTML code. I tried to do this but it didn't work, so I gave up on changing the fonts.     We watched the book review videos of other students. I thought that they were very good at editing like a YouTuber. I especi...

     Today I did my presentation. I was so nervous before the presentation that I got a slight stomach ache, but when I started my presentation, the nervousness suddenly disappeared, and I was able to act naturally.       There were some good points and bad points about my presentation. The good points are, firstly as I just mentioned, I was confident. Secondly, since I wasn't nervous, I was able to do my body gestures constantly. I used some original gestures so the content of my presentation would be easier to understand. Thirdly, I was able to walk in front of the screen. I was worried that there wouldn't be any time to go in front and talk. Moreover, I only glanced at the slides a few times and I was able to look at the audience more. I think I was able to have more eye contact than my last presentation, so I'm glad that I became better at doing presentations. Furthermore, I spoke more emotionally than usual.     The bad points were first...

    Today five people did their presentations. I noticed three things from my classmates' presentations. First, I noticed that many people spoke a little fast. I speak a little slower than today's presenters because I have to remember what I have to say. However, the presentations were about eight minutes so speaking fast might have been a good thing. Secondly, some people had closed their hands in front of their body. This means the presenter is nervous so it should be avoided. At home when I'm relaxed, I'm able to do my gestures and talk fluently, but when I'm nervous, I unconsciously put my hands in front of my body or completely forget what I have to say. Thirdly, I'm not good at saying something that I haven't practised, so I think it would be difficult for me to answer some questions.

    Today, three people did their book review presentation. These are the points that Mr.Paterson pointed out; talk in a formal and understandable way, the website links should be customised links, line up the references, unify the style of the images and summary slides with the three main points from each part.     I realised that I also had these problems as well. For example, my image references have long website links and are unorganised. I also had some images that didn't match with the content, so I will have to change that. Especially, my One Last Thing slide: it doesn't have any impact or relation with what I'm saying. One of the presenters had mixed cartoonish and realistic images and their style was inconsistent. I have a similar problem, but my limitation is that I wasn't able to find free images for the characters, so I can't do anything to solve  this problem. 

    Today we continued practising our presentation. In our last lesson, I couldn't finish my presentation in class so I did my presentation again. Before, my audience said that my presentation was too long, so today I cut a lot of details and changed my expressions. Despite making the presentation shorter, it took nine minutes forty five seconds to finish my presentation. Also, my voice became too small since I had to think while talking. My audience said that my gestures and slides were good. They also said the summary contents were a little long, so I'm going to reduce the things of what I have to say.