Friday morning I had the amazing privilege to present at the Global Education Conference 2012. This is a week long conference done completely online and completely free. Last year I was an attendee to many of these sessions. It was my goal after being amazed by so many fantastic people that I would knock down a personal hurdle of mine and present. About a month ago I did my very first presentation at the ITAG Conference. A few days ago I did my very own first online presentation.
Even though I used the same slides and information with both conferences I realized many things that and that both sessions ended up being quite different.
Let me go into what I learned from my online presentation and then I hope you take time to listen to my presentation as well as all the other amazing sessions. It is going to take me forever to get caught up with all the presentations.
1. I presented at 4 am Denver time. What this means is that many people in the US were sleeping. My audience that attended were from a variety of countries like Morocco, Italy, Spain, and India. Therefore I had to quickly think on my feet and remember that making detailed explanations of Common Core were useless as this does not exist in other countries.
2. Presenting online can be more difficult than presenting in person. It is hard to read and gauge your audience. I like engagement and interaction. I was presenting and discussing PLN, Twitter, etc. and I then realized that part of my audience had not concept of what I was talking about. Trying to gain some prior audience knowledge is difficult.
3. Adlib. I had to speak off the top of my head. I had to use the same slides as my ITAG conference, but I soon realized that I need to plan and prepare differently for an online presentation. What works on person does not always work online.
4. I love presenting. I love being with other like minds. I love sharing information and learning from others whether it is online through these type of presentations or in person like the NAGC conference. I have now presented twice in the last month and am motivated to improve my presenting skills and continue to apply for conferences to apply to. I realize I am far from an amazing presenter, but I am getting there. More practice and more presentations will help me in my craft. Perhaps one day I will be good to present at a conference like NAGC and hopefully have one of the key presentations at Global Ed!!!!!
Thanks to anyone who joined and listened to my presentation. As always I am always open to feedback and advice. My next goal is to find a way to present without slides in person! I need tangibles and creative props, but that is my mission.
You can access all links to the Global Education Conference as well as the link to my very own presentation on my presentation wiki
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