Reflection 2: A Presentation

I think my presentation went well, overall. I did not reset my timer after the first five-minute warning, so I’m not sure how long I actually spoke, which is worrisome since I’m a youngest child (childhood nickname: “Showboat Needs Attention”). I liked the simplicity of my slides, which was not accidental — I took time drilling slide content down to only essential, interesting elements in an effort to follow the 6×6 rule for slide design. Before getting teacher certification, I was in nonprofit communications and fundraising for 15 years, so reductive writing comes easily. I think it’s fun. 

Like writing, any presentation is for an audience. It’s not about me. I have not received any feedback yet, so I cannot be sure how successful mine was as a communication tool. The small group chat in the prior class was more gratifying, even without the slides, because there was so much give-and-take among the three of us. For the whole class format, my focus was on how Activity Theory could be useful to people working with a different primary theory, or how the takeaways from prior research using Activity Theory could inform someone else’s work. 

I also tried to incorporate images that were emblematic of associations I was making while reading and processing the material. I’m not sure these are helpful to anyone but me, but they might be, if not for full comprehension, then as an approach or a bridge from something familiar to something new and abstract. I consciously chose to do this with images instead of words to maintain a boundary between published work by scholars and my own interpretations and self-scaffolds. 

In future presentations, I would like to experiment with short-form video. Nothing holds my high school students’ attention like short-form video. Adults are no different despite their denials. Motion demands attention. I don’t need collaborators to create video, but it is more time consuming than making slides, so the presntation would have to merit that degree of time investment. I like TED talks, so I will probably increase my TED watch rate to pick up tips on how to present without becoming boring or irritating when nothing is required of the audience but watching and listening. That’s the most difficult thing to achieve when presenting — provoking active listening from a physically passive audience. And how does one measure that?