Why does it take a crazy person to change the world? This is the question we’ve been exploring in our humanities and maker classes for a few months and it’s taken until now to come up with a solid answer and a way to present that answer to the world. At the PLP winter exhibition everyone in PLP 10 presented their pêcha kucha presentation on how it takes a crazy person to change the world.
To start off, you’re probably wondering what “pêcha kucha” means or what it even is. A pêcha kucha is a very informative, fast paced oral presentation that relies on the presenters knowledge of their topic. À pêcha kucha also has images paying in the the background but they are on a timer of 20 seconds. Every 20 seconds the picture will change and the presenter has no control over it. Because of the timed pictures, the presenter is at an effective and controlled pace that was already planned out.
Our job was to make a 7 minute, 20 slide pêcha kucha on crazy people end examples of how people that changed the world were crazy. The first steps of creating this go all the way back to before our Seattle field study. This was when our teachers introduced the “cray cray” unit. They told us to chose someone who influenced history and make a keynote presentation on them. I chose Jimi Hendrix. I chose him because I always thought he seemed like a very interesting guy. After a week or two of research I presented my keynote. It was a disaster. I thought it would be a good idea to present without note cards or any reference. I thought it would be good because whenever you’re reading cards, you’re not looking at the audience and you’re not engaging. The problem was I didn’t know my topic nearly well enough. I stumbled on all my words and made many pauses. This was definitely a learning experience and really helped me see what made a great live presentation and what you have to do to prepare for it.
The next thing we did was go to Seattle. We learned a lot in Seattle and collected lots of firsthand information on “crazy people” and world changers. This field study was important for us to fully understand the depth of the question posed to us. In Seattle we interviewed real people with real opinions to see what they thought about our driving question. If you want a longer more in depth and day to day explanation of Seattle, click here.
After Seattle it was finally time to get to work on our last and final project that we would present in the PLP winter exhibition as our grades showcase of our learning. Our 7 minute, no script, no notes, set slide time pêcha kucha. The first step creating this was writing an outline for each 20 seconds of the presentation. Each slide would be 20 seconds so by writing your outline in 20 second increments you help memorize your points with your slide show pictures. This process was time consuming but necessary and it was definitely a different way of planning your speech that I had not done before. The next step was putting meaningful pictures to your slides that matched with the words you were going to say. This part wasn’t that difficult because we took lots of great pictures in Seattle the would really be great for our presentations. Now before we went ahead to memorizing our projects we had to setup our exhibition space. We had pretty much the entire library at our school to work with and customize to our liking. We decided to go with a coffee shop type theme because it wouldn’t be impossible to recreate but it would be classy and nice. We cleared out all the old chairs and brought in nice white tables and fancy stools and everything. We got different people to bring in a coffee maker, tea maker, cookies, etc. And on the day of the exhibition the room looked really great. The final step was to memorize 7 minutes of material. Because I was behind I hadn’t memorized my presentation on the day of the exhibition. Me, Kai, and Daniel all got together in a small room beside the library and made a quiet space to recite and practice our presentations. Luckily, I was last so I had the most time to practice. Probably not until 1 hour before my presentation was I ready to present and finally feeling confident. Once my presentation time came, (I was the last one of the night) I killed it. Once I got up in front of everyone and started talking it was over before I knew it.
In reflection, this was honestly one of if not my very favorite project I have ever done. Not because it necessarily the most interesting to me or the most fun. It was my favorite because more than any other project it pushed me to do my best more than any other project had. When your given a hard presentation date and timeline it really makes you strive to do your best. This project definitely helped me improve my skills and my learning in many ways. It helped me with determination by putting hard but achievable goals in front of me. It helped my with creative writing by making me structure and format my writing different from how I would normally. Lastly, this project taught me way more public speaking skills than I had before. It showed me how to be confident and how to continue even if you do make a mistake. This project was one that really showed me that if I try my hardest, I really can do a lot.