TED Presentations

Ah, what to say about our TED presentations. TED has consumed a little too much of my life for the past month or so and I'm elated it's over. TED was pretty stressful but I'm happy with my performance and contributions. I'm still improving on my collaborative skills and there were countless problems I ran into during this process. For example, I'm the editor of the project. As editor I wanted to make the page as good as it could possibly be, but in this specific case that was difficult. This was because one group member contributed, in my opinion, a plethora of useless, irrelevant information and I think even she herself admitted to ruining what the rest of our group members had already done. This was frustrating to me but I decided to leave a majority of her work because she deserves credit for her effort, although I think our group will suffer for it.

The problem above is one of many obstacles this TED project presented. To be honest I think what everyone will take away from the TED project is not what was the initial goal. What TED taught me was how to deal with working with people you cannot depend on and those who, at times, you find incompetent and really get on your nerves. This is very similar to most group projects, but this was unique because I had never met most of my group members. This made it a tad bit more frustrating.

Unfortunately, this isn't what I was looking forward to getting out of this project. I think the idea of this is very "Academy" and it has huge potential, but it is still in it's developmental stages. I really appreciate how much input we had in the design of this project and how helpful our teachers were when we vented our troubles. I look forward to seeing how this project will evolve year after year, if the Academy continues to do it.

I have several ideas for the future of TED. I really liked what Leanne and several others brought up in our discussion today. Couldn't we spend the time we used to make this project on actually helping people? Could we not? I think, being the passionate group of people that we are, we could actually make an impact if we all tried.

I also think that the videos are perhaps the most valuable part of this project. I think it would be cool to watch one every Thursday night and discuss it on Fridays for half an hour or something. That way we could watch every video in its entirety. Academy is heavily discussion-based, and these videos have a lot to discuss. I don't see why we should make something on the internet where we just research certain aspects of our video and present them, when everyone could get that type of information on their own as well as learn and expand their understanding more through a discussion.

Overall, I'm just happy that TED is over and I can relax. I think the best part of this project was that we communicated with our teachers so well. It was really comforting to know and see that they all have our best interests at heart and want us to succeed. I was also proud of our entire Sophomore Academy class. I think, in general, we led all of our groups well and contributed heavily. Although some people may have dropped the ball, I think we all did well. :)