I ended up presenting about digital storytelling in May. I would have preferred to present in July, but the dates had already been taken. Fortunately, I had already thought about how I would share what I had learned with my staff. Providing the students time to complete the final project that I wanted to show was probably the most challenging.
I was quite nervous about my presentation. It is so hard to know what others are interested in when you don’t know your audience. Consequently, I decided to focus on what might interest my staff. (To date, I’ve still not had time to share the whole presentation with them, but I’m ready whenever there is time.) It took me several hours, or perhaps it was days, to prepare. (It’s hard to remember now. I just know that with the pressure of everything else that needed to be done in May that it seemed like it took far too long.) With no idea of the size of my audience, I prepared handouts for about 20. I even had burned a few cds for anyone who might want to take a closer look at examples. Again, I had my staff in mind if I had too much. I practiced the timing and typed out a script for myself. I thought that I needed to be ready to present for one hour. (In reality it was changed to 45 minutes, but no worries.) Once I got everything prepared, I purchased some speakers so that my examples could be heard. I tried to consider all potential problems that could occur. I remember reading everything over on the bus ride out to SFU and changing the order of my plan.
When it was time to present, I was ready for my audience, but … there were only two people there. Both were mentors. I thought I was nervous before. Finding out that I had to share things with those who already knew what I was going to share was very unnerving. Both people had already seen a lot of what I had prepared. I was encouraged to pretend that they didn’t have prior knowledge – ya, right! In the end I felt like I babbled for the whole time. I skipped around my script so much, that I’m not sure what I actually presented in the end. My audience was very encouraging, and if not really interested, they were good actors. Hopefully, I was able to share something they hadn’t already thought of. I feel I was able to answer all questions at least.
In summary, I’m glad my presentation is over. I’ve shared a small portion to the teachers at school at one of the staff meetings. Perhaps there will be a time when I can use all of the handouts that I prepared. Ask me about digital storytelling sometime. I should be an ‘expert’ by now.
