Our Presentation

I dont know if our presentation reached the 5 minute mark or whether it exceeded it either but i admit our presentation was a little unorganised.

There was  a whiteboard with the order of teams presenting in the room when we came in and our team was first. What are the chances of this happening? I dont know why though but thankfully the second group switched with ours and we went second instead.

Before i continue with how we did, i will firstly confess our unpreparedness before class. Overall, we knew what we were going to talk about however we did not have a plan to present. In addition to this, our files were not uploaded online to our zones yet.

As the first group started we came to the conclusion that everyone else had a powerpoint to go with their presentation. It was discussed last night whether we still needed the report to accompany with our presentation since its deadline was extended. I had agreed to extract the main elements from the report instead to use in the presentation, this included the plan for the rest of the year for our project (work distribution etc).

While the first group presented, we rushed into making one of the fastest man-made powerpoints to have ever been made in the history of the universe. It feels as though the first group did not reach the five minutes because we were so busy making a powerpoint and planning what we were going to say and who to say it. Before we knew it, it was our turn.

We sort of hesitated at first in hopes that of all the possibilities on earth, the smallest fraction of unlikely chances would fall upon us and enlighten Lorna with sudden kindness so that she would sense our struggle and miraculously grant us to be one of the last groups presenting instead. Of course, this did not happen. Rather, we walked over to the front with failed confidence.

It took us a lot of time setting up our laptop since our files were everywhere. Our codes and powerpoint were all on a USB, the images were from our blogs and the laptop also had some coding. Then we started talking. At first i think we were going fine but then Soobin lost for words and signalled one of us other members to take over. This made things really awkward because i think i was supposed to speak but China did instead (thankyou China). Then the rest of the presentation involved 50% awkward pauses because we didnt know what to say next and the powerpoint somehow didnt aid us through this.

When we demonstrated our digital prototype - or actual application so far, one button did not work when it did just before the presentation on the table. This confused us, lowered our self esteem for the remainder of the presentation and therefore set us in a position that was more vulnerable to mistakes/faults such as stutters, mind blanks and awkward pauses. It was later realised that we had tested the files that were on the laptop and not the USB, where only the USB files contained our latest updates and an actual working application.

The challenges we spoke of elaborated upon our difficulty of filtering the animal articles. Our focus was on retrieving articles from Trove on a specific animal (and this was able to be done), however we could not filter our searches to bring forth only the articles that related to the game. If we searched up crocodiles, for example, articles of crocodiles would come up as well as stories about fashion with crocodile skin. We did not want this in our game.

In the end, we were given feedback regarding the coding of our application. Lorna wanted to know if the randomly generated articles from Trove were actually randomly generated articles from Trove. We admitted that at the moment, they were just randomly generated photos of articles from Trove. In summary, we took the longest time to prepare and present and received the shortest feedback. I have to say i walked back to our table with a lot more confidence knowing that we finished our presentation, despite all the flaws.

Other groups that presented all had prepared powerpoints, working digital prototypes and three items in which they wanted feedback on. Good on them.

After we got back to our table, we agreed that one presentation should not be so poor as to drag our marks down. We have done so well so far, one presentation shouldnt give all our hopes up. Since all of this week's tasks - the presentation, demonstration and progress report - are worth a total of 15%, and the presentation & demonstration weighs 60% of the 15%, this meant that the progress report weighs 40% - 6% in total (and the presentation and demo 9% in total). We agreed that this report would be the report that pulls our marks up. We plan to continue on the briefly started report tonight and not stay up all of tomorrow night and Saturday morning to finish it, since it unfortunately seems that this area of assessment is what we expertise in.

After the report is due on saturday, we start our mid semester break. Its only a week long and upon returning from the break, there will be a load of assignments that will be due. We all know deep down that this holiday will demand for work catch up and assignments and that play, relaxation and rest will have to wait until the end of year holidays. Oh the depression.