Presentation Analysis

Jessica and I focused on environmental awareness in our motivational presentation. It was extremely important for us to provide a strong, purposeful introduction to our students so they would have a clear understanding on why we were introducing these two artists; Janet Nolan and John Dahlsen. We were teaching our students the importance of this theme and we considered the artists as our ‘supporting actors’ to help emphasize this importance. Although teaching a lesson with another person is not common inside a classroom setting, we wanted this unique experience to feel as organic as possible. For this to happen, we thought it would be best if we knew exactly what we each wanted the class to get from the information we were providing and use this to bounce off each other to create a comfortable dialogue.      

Looking through our assessment sheets most of the students found our introduction to be useful and engaging, however others felt it was too lengthy and was not specific enough to our theme. Putting this feedback into consideration, we feel it is important for a teacher to find a middle ground in order to teach a successful lesson to their students. Guiding the students into a discussion which explains the rationale of the lesson will give them a better understanding on what to expect from the artists and the work they are about to be shown. It was also said that our first slide, Canopy Flight (1978), was a difficult slide to begin with. We could not provide a larger image of this composition because of its poor image quality. Knowing this, we now realize how important it would’ve been to either begin with the Canopy Flight (1983) composition or find another resource to sight this earlier work. However, with these minor hiccups in our presentation, we feel like we were quick to improvise and restate questions if it was not easily understood the first time.  We also had some issues with voice projection and time management. Although we got cut off at the end of our presentation, we both feel as if we led our discussion to where it was supposed to go even without the last slide. Our discussions provided enough insight and also engaged our students to the point where they were asking to see more. This showed us that even though we were not able to finish fully, we were able to connect our students with our theme and the artists we introduced.