The Assignment
The last portion of our “Crazy” unit was our exhibition. Our job was to create a nearly seven minute long presentation called a Pecha Kucha. Pecha Kuchas are a kind of presentation which consists of 20 images that change every 20 seconds. The content of the presentation relies heavily on the oral presentation. We were tasked with creating a thesis that related to our trip to Seattle, and our overall guiding question, “Why does it take a crazy person to change the world?”. We watched a few Pecha Kuchas before we started our own, just so we could fully understand how they worked. Here is one of my favourites!
“Sprinkling Pixie Dust” by Greg Bauges
The thesis that I ended up creating was, “Crazy people change the world by pushing past obstacles that often stop others”. Then, I used what I learned throughout this unit to back up this thesis with evidence of people, places, and personal experiences. This step took a while because it was hard to decide what to include after learning so much about the topic. It was especially difficult to relate the story back to myself, but eventually, everything just clicked together.
Exhibition Night
After about a week of revisions, it was finally the day of the exhibition. We started setting up right after lunch. Our room this year was the back of the library, which was a lot easier to decorate compared to previous years because our whole class was working on the same room. Usually, we are split into groups to decorate a room, but since we were just doing presentations, we were able to use a single room which gave us the ability to really theme it how we liked it.
The idea that we chose was to decorate the room like a little cafe or restaurant for an open mic night. We set up little tables and chairs and had tea and coffee, along with cookies and mini sandwiches. We made sure to include plenty of seating so that there would be plenty of room for both parents and friends, and our classmates.
Photo by Melika Niki
Then, Luca J created a “menu” board showing the names of everyone’s presentations and the times, which tied the restaurant theme back to our projects.
Photo by Melika Niki
The Presentation
The final step was to present. I was pretty nervous to present due to the fact that we were not allowed to use notes of any kind to remember our presentations. This was scary to all of us because our teachers had originally said that we could use bullet points while presenting, but a few days before the exhibition the rug was ripped out from under our feet. This meant that we had to practice a lot more so that we would be sure we wouldn’t forget anything on stage.
When it was finally my turn to present, I was surprisingly calm. As I walked to the front of the room, all I could think was that in less than seven minutes, I would be completely done with my project. This thought calmed my nerves and I felt like I did the best I could have with this assignment. Though I stumbled a bit, I am ultimately very proud of what I accomplished. If you’d like to check out my Pecha Kucha, I have included a video that was filmed.
https://youtu.be/9qMNc0i-tWY