Final 20 Time Post!

At the end of my 20 Time Project, which was related to the Playground Pals Bus Stop Program, I have completed: a guidebook, an official PPBS website, and an official PPBS presentation. I have also successfully shared this program with one school district: the Moreland School District. The special education director of this district has guaranteed that she would implement this program into Payne Elementary School. Mission Accomplished! I am going to talk to 2 other school districts this week and hopefully some of their schools will also accept this program. Over summer and at the beginning of senior year, I will be completing the paperwork necessary for obtaining my Girl Scouts Gold Award, the highest honor a Girl Scout can receive. Click HERE to see my website!

 For my TED Talk (which is this video that you can click on to watch!), I explained to the class not only what my 20 Time project was, but more importantly, what I've learned from it. The process of preparing for my TED Talk in itself was a learning process. I wrote down a rough draft of a speech just as a brain dump, and ended up using it to help me format my slides. I also used notecards with small bullet points about each topic I wanted to make sure to mention. To practice and memorize my presentation, I practiced my speech in various ways: sitting down, standing up, reading straight off of the written speech at first, timing, without timing, using just notecards, using no aid, etc. I was extremely nervous right before the presentation, but once I got up there, I felt as if I were simply talking to another person. I lost all my nervousness, and because I know this topic like the back of my hand, I was able to talk about it instead of reading completely off of the notecards. Though I do admit I used the notecards quite a bit, I used them to make sure that I was staying on topic and that I didn't forget any important sentences. I could have definitely worked on memorizing the speech a little better so that I wouldn't have to look at my notecards as much. From this experience, I have learned that I probably shouldn't psych myself out for presentations as much as I normally do and I should focus more on preparation than the aesthetics of the presentation.