Attending the Capstone Presentations: Takeaways for my Own (May Post)

    Over the past month or so, I have attended as many Global Scholar Capstone Project presentations as I could. The ones I went to include SHE Nicaragua, Laila's map project, Milo's project, Thibeaux’s movie, Jackson and Juliet’s Miry’s List grant, etc. 

    Now that I have seen many Capstone Presentations, I wanted to take the opportunity to combine my general takeaways so that I will remember them for when I do my own.

    The first thing! The visual aids were absolutely everything. She Nicaragua's presentation and some wonderful image, the colors will cohesive, and thus font matched. They also had limited words on the slides. Laila's presentation had a similar effect as the slides Illustrated exactly what she was talking about. If Laila has been discussing her project without the aid of the slides and her images, I think I would have been lost. For Miry's List presentation, it was not as important because the concepts are easier to understand without visuals, but the images were still great to have.  When I do my own presentation, I think it'll be important to not only decide what images and visuals I need but also how they will eat exactly what I'm saying. I don't think this is a new idea, but especially when you're presenting things that may be foreign to your audience members, it's especially important to implement as many aids as you can to help your audience understand your project.

    Another thing I loved was that many of the projects actually had a leader come in. For example, Miry came in, and Laila had a woman come in to talk about her work. Hearing from the students is definitely my favorite part of any Global Scholar presentation, but as I was mentioning above, any tool or person that can enhance your message or presentation is good to consider.  On the other hand, Thibeaux did not have a “professional” come in as she did not need one. His movie spoke for itself. I think for me personally it will depend on what my project is and if I can have someone come. 

    Finally,  my biggest takeaway was that I can really do a project that I want to do. There's a broad spectrum of types of projects, which only reminded me that My Capstone project will truly be tailored to what I am interested in how I want to present my information.

    I'm looking forward to my own!