Presentation Reflections

1  1.)   What are some of the best things you saw during the presentation?  Why do you like them?  What were the most effective teaching strategies you witnessed?

I thought that overall the presentations that everyone gave were fabulous.  Everyone, with the exception of Erin, used Prezi.  I’ve never seen or used Prezi before, but I can see what a great tool it can be for a presentation if it’s used correctly.  Some people had really unique ideas for setting up their Prezi’s.  I like how Jerry used a rattlesnake image to weave through his presentation.  It was creative of him to come up with that.  I thought that idea made his presentation run more smoothly.  It provided a good flow.  Probably the best thing I saw during the presentations was Sara’s improvisation when she ran into a technical problem with Prezi during her presentation.  I think she wanted to show a clip of Middle English speaking.  When it didn’t come up for her, she did it herself.  Suddenly she just starts speaking in Middle English!  This was surprising and impressive.  Instead of getting flustered and tongue tied during her crisis, she remained cool.  She spoke up in that language.  I was very impressed with the way she handled that.  Also Cassandra was impressive.  Her teaching strategies are well done.  She is confident and engaging.  She calls on students to answer questions.  At the same time she is roaming around the room and staying active.  You can tell she has done this before and is completely at ease when she is presenting in front of a class.  I wish I could say the same for me.  A few of the presenters encountered some technical difficulties (Sara, Ryan, and Roger).  This is something that is bound to happen to every teacher at some point in their career when using technology.  The key is how you handle the situation when it arises.  I thought all of them handled it very well.  I already pointed out how impressed I was with Sara when it happened to her.  But Ryan and Roger did a nice job too.  They remained calm and played it off real well when their respective crisis’s struck.  They each continued talking and presenting despite the fact their videos weren’t playing.  This took the attention away from the problem because we students still had to listen.  

2  2.)  What were the least engaging/helpful things you saw during the presentations?  Why were they not effective?  What could any specific student do to improve? 

An issue that came up for a few people, that certainly weren’t helpful, was the technical difficulties that arose.  I think these folks might have had too many video clips that caused delays.  I’m not real good at understanding this technical stuff, but I’m guessing it was too much for the system to handle.  Too many videos were causing the clips to keep buffering and not playing.  They might want to cut down on this to prevent it from happening next time.  Another thing that was not engaging was the few instances where I thought some presenters were reading the texts.  I know it can be easy to fall into this trap because I’ve done it myself before.  It’s important to avoid this because students can start to lose focus in what you are saying when this happens.  Middle and high school students can have pretty short attention spans.  If you allow them to time lose focus by simply reading and boring them, you can ruin your presentation.  That can also come in danger of happening when you have delays with buffering videos.  Technical issues and reading are two things you must attempt to avoid when doing these presentations.