Lesson 10: Presentation

Today, it was our turn to present the classroom project. After two groups presented their project, our group name was called. I was not that nervous because I was rather excited to present and desperate to finish the assignment as fast as possible. Although the previous groups did an excellent well-structured presentation, it didn't put so much pressure on me so I think I was able to present in a relatively good condition. However, even in that good condition we had exposed many mistakes and lack of preparation in front of the audiences.
There are several things that we did well in the presentation. One thing that should be highly evaluated in our presentation is that it included a lot of dopamine-generators, which are jokes, gestures or words that make audiences laugh in order to attract their attention. Luckily, most of the audiences laughed a lot during the presentation. It might have been just ridicule or derision, but it's important that they were motivated to at least listen to our presentation. It was unexpectedly lucky that my little mistakes and misstatement somehow triggered a laugh. Considering the fact that so many of the audiences laughed during the presentation, I can be confident that our presentation somehow, even if not intentionally, became an entertainment.
Compared to the  number of things that we did well in the presentation, there are too many points to reflect. The main point is the lack of preparation. None of us perfectly prepared for the presentation and about a half of what we said during the presentation was ad-lib. I did not count how many times I mumbled and said 'uh' or 'ah', but I'm pretty sure that it was hard to fully understand what I said and that's virtually all because of lack of preparation. To improve, I believe it's necessary to rehearse and make points clear in advance.
Lastly, it was such a dissapointment that my presentation skill and English has dropped dramatically. Even though my English was never good, it was shocking to watch my own speaking in video and realize how awful it is and how much I lost in just one year of life in Japan. I think I need fundamental change in attitude towards English-speaking and opportunities to learn English within everyday life.

Lesson 9: Presentation

Today was the presentation day and we had 3 groups presenting. The first group was talking about music room and how to improve it. I did not quite get the point of rennovating the music room because I do not think music room is that important and we have no problem using the room. They basically raised bad points of the room and some solutions, but none of them take music class so their arguments seemed a little unconvincing.
One thing that I learned from their presentation is that it was a bad idea talking while standing behind the desk with a computer on top of it.
Next group was really good and communicated well. Their claims were clear all the way through the presentation and explanation was clear overall. I thought the idea of putting ball pool was ridiculous, but other ideas such as round desks and wheel chairs were mind blowing. What I liked about the group was their way of talking and interaction with the audiences. They had some dopamine generators and visual tools in the presentation, which kept me listening to them. They were all confident and communicated very well.
The last group has done the best work. Although their idea was not that creative, but they made it seem innovative and somehow attractive by emphasizing the key points of the ideas. Their intreraction with the audiences was also good, especially Shion and Monika. They used gestures efficiently at the right time.I'm hoping to communicate with the audiences as this group.

Lesson 8: Preparation

Today was simply a preparation day for the presentation of the project. As our progress over the last 2 months was extremely limited, we had to clarify what's already done and what has to be done by next Tuesday and it turned out that the only thing done at the moment is logo. We basically made no progress over the last 2 months so we just divided the work and decided when to work together.
Then, we went to the science room for inspection and interviewed Mr. Nagatomo, a physics teacher. He claimed that the science room is too messy and should have more proper storage for equipments. He also complained the room cannot be completely dark and he has trouble conducting experiments that need darkness. His complaints were new to us and i think it could give us a clue to improve the room.
After the interview, we moved onto discussion on the video. I wanted to create catchy video so I suggested putting funny introduction of the team members like in a music video, but it was denied. Finally, we just took a video of blackboard animation, which I suggested.