Second Round of Presentations

Hello reader, this is my second blog post about the presentations held in class. My overall opinion on groups one, two, and three presentations were good. I can tell everyone worked well and completed their role to the best of their abilities. However, was there room for improvement? Absolutely, there’s always ways we can better explain and present new information to our peers. I was in group three and our topic was Infrastructure. I assumed doing this presentation was going to be smooth sailing just like the first time around, but I was completely mistaken. We decided as a whole group to create the outline as follows: 1. History/Overview 2. American Perspective 3. World Perspective 4. Where we will be in ten to twenty years 5. An interview with an FPL worker 6. Local Organizations 7. National Organizations 8. Important Events 9. Government/State/Federal Laws 10. Environment (how it affects the environment and how the environment changes infrastructure are built) Personally, I had a hard time with my group’s topic being infrastructure. I’m not familiar with this topic or really have any interest in it. I found it hard to concentrate when searching for information about the topic. My inability to stay focused on this theme caused me to make bad decisions in prepping for the presentation. I procrastinated everything from searching the web, writing my points, and even discussing information with my classmate whom I split the history section of infrastructure portion with. My partner wrote about infrastructure’s history and how it correlates to buildings, waste management, electricity, and communication. Whereas my focus was on the relationship between infrastructure to road safety, transportation, and water. Finding credible information was challenging for me. In a previous class we had a guest speaker explain to us what sites were good to use for research purposes. Some examples of good websites with accurate and useful information should end in gov, org, and net. At least that is what I remember from the guest speaker. She also mentioned how we could use the school’s library to find more reliable resources. When I attempted to use the school’s library, I found it quite difficult to navigate around. I was lost on what the actual articles looked like compared to written abstracts surrounding infrastructure. Therefore, I opted out of using the library route and went back on Google. Eventually, after a few hours I found a total of five websites with valuable information pertaining to my portion of the project that I could use. Through completing this project, I learned how much our everyday lives are revolved around infrastructure. In addition, to the many ways we as civilians have affected infrastructure. Group two and three project themes were more entertaining and visually appealing. The themes were gender equality and climate change. My favorite topic out of all the topics would have to be gender equality because it is more relatable. I was able to pay attention to the presentation with no problem because it is a topic, I am passionate about. I believe gender equality is a prevalent issue that we should bring more awareness to. I always find the statistics between the way men and women are treated in a workplace to be shocking. I am appalled by some of the stories I’ve heard of women experiences with gender inequality. Personally, I liked how the group incorporated an interview with a lady professor. I can’t seem to remember her name, but I believe the subject she teaches is Philosophy She informed the class how inequality can be expressed in multiple ways. My biggest takeaway from the interview is there’s is misconception that gender inequality only applies to women and men is our enemy which is false. In my own opinion, this misunderstanding is why men do not seem to want to engage in this topic or take it seriously. I am not implying that all men are not open to this discussion, but from what I have seen this seems to be the case. The other topic climate change is a constant issue we have been battling with for years. The presenters highlighted many points surrounding the matter, these are the ones I recall: • The causes and effect we have on the environment. • How climate change is affecting aquatic and wildlife. • Ways we can limit pollution and our carbon footprint. • What our environment will look like in the future. I’m always surprised by people’s lack of interest in climate change. Considering Earth is our home, and our main objective should be keeping it clean. Unfortunately, this is the harsh reality of the life we live. We love the benefits we receive from it such as, fast transportation, technology, electricity, manufacturing goods, and housing. However, not many people care about how detrimental our lifestyles have become for the environment. From the presentation I learned that in the year 2020, the garbage patch covered an estimated surface area of one-point-six million square kilometers, which is an area doubled the size of Texas. It is hard to understand how the number of plastics is steadily increasing since there are other resources now more than ever to opt out of using plastic materials. The group did mention several ways we can reduce climate change and organizations whose main goal is to make the environment a better place. Overall, I still would like to think we have time to come together as a community to help clean our environment. Everything depends on whether people are willing to make the effort before it is too late. My final review is everyone did a great job and seemed less nervous when presenting. Maybe it is because this is the second time around and we already know what to expect. Ways I can improve for the next project is have better time management, create a specific list of topics I need to research, and review over the material prior to presenting to prevent myself reading word for word from the slides. My goal is to create a natural feel when presenting.