Javier De la Plaza - Assignment #1

 Blogger Assignment #1

In my opinion I think this was a good first project for this class, because it wasn’t hard to understand and it forced us to work with our group to cooperate which I think is good as it's a good way to meet your classmates and feel more confident when presenting. The topic that I had to present was about how to properly research information for your presentation, this I believe was an interesting topic as it's something that some people would not look too much into but is actually very important when making a presentation or a speech. Me and my classmate Cindy were presenting chapter 6 and we came to the conclusion to make up our own topic so it would be easier for the audience in this case our classmates to understand all the steps and things you have to look at when making research. Our topic was how has Earth’s climate changed in the past few decades? We picked this topic because we thought that it was very interesting and that anyone has some type of information therefore they would be able to understand the presentation better. We also thought about making up questions to the audience so that we could interact with them, even though at first it was going to be both of us I didn’t end up doing any questions. The first thing in my slide was to reflect your own knowledge on the topic which is very easy and just how it sounds, this should just be your own ideas on the topic. The next part was what online sources to use, which in conclusion should just be sources that are reliable, unbiased, accurate and up to date. Even Though it might seem like there would be many sources that follow those characteristics there really aren't as many as you think when you actually start doing your research, in my case with the topic that we had some good sources would be NASA climate change website or Climate.gov. I think this was a very good topic to have to do research on because I was able to learn a lot on what sources I should be using when making my research and even also what library resources are good to use. Honestly I have never used library resources to do research but with this project I was able to discover some good library resources like ProQuest or JSTOR which are great sources to do research on as they provide in-depth, technical articles from leading climate researchers. The last thing that I had to present on my slide was how to maximize the effectiveness of your information or in other words how to properly write something in the google bar so you are able to get the best information, some of this key strategies were used specific keywords, explore opposing viewpoints, filter by date range search for more than text. This was all of the information that I had to present with some extra pictures about the sources in the presentation. Now something that I didn’t like is that I feel like I was one of the few people that actually made sure that the slides weren't just a bunch of words and then I would just read from it, I feel like that’s what got me a little bit more nervous in the presentation as I had to remember all the information in my head without reading the slides therefore even though I knew my information their were sometimes where I froze up remembering what I had to say next which I feel it made my part of the presentation a bit harder. Now my group I think we did good, we weren’t that confident when our group was about to go in but I feel like everyone in the group did a good job on their part, I really liked working in my group as I feel like we are all very similar and worked as a team to finish the presentation properly. Also, the class leaders I feel like they did a really good job at starting and concluding the presentations. They were very helpful when we had some questions about the project. Now reflecting on the other groups and their presentations, I think group #1 was very good their slide looked really good and in my opinion it was the best looking one in the class, the only thing that I didn’t really understand was that some of their slides contained a lot of text and the presentation was just reading of the slides which was something that the professor had told us not to do. But in general they looked like a very prepared group and like they all knew their information and what they each had done their research on. Goup #3 was good it talked about how to properly make a speech which I found very interesting, but in my opinion they had the same issue as group #1 in which their slides have a lot of information and most of the presentation it's just reading from the slides and not interacting with the audience. Finally group #4 was the last group to present. I think their slide was really good, very informative presentation and everyone in the group presented their topic very well and showed a lot of knowledge in what they were talking about. Things that I feel that me and my classmates can improve for the next assignment we have is to be a bit more organized on what work we are each doing, make a zoom meeting after class so that everyone is confident on their part of the assignment and practice our presentation skills in a zoom meeting. Personally, I feel like I have to be more open when presenting as I feel like this time I got very nervous, trying to use my hands more often when talking and trying to interact with the audience more often.