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24 October 2004. I'm afraid I bombed in Miami. 15 or 16 teachers were there. I was the fourth of four presenters, and we were behind schedule by the time we got to my slot. So I tried to rush through what I had instead of skipping. I had too much material, anyway. I may have made a mistake by having the audience work on collages while I was talking and showing transparencies, too. My impression was that they didn't get much out of the images I showed or my comments on them. They didn't seem to find my two opening samples funny, either--those were the ones about read and grin, and Gee Whiz. I thought they were sure-fire. But everyone in the audience got a handout with thoughts and sample poems, and Internet addresses, so something good may eventually come of it. Oh, one young man in the audience actually finished the activity using a collage and a random word to make a mathemaku. I liked what he did, but I tend to like any mathemaku anybody else makes, so happy I am that someone besides me is trying them.
The people at the museum were great--extremely helpful, and just plain nice. They prepared a notebook of information for the teachers, and were kind enough to kind me a copy. It had a lot of stuff in it new to me, including data about visio-textual art I wasn't familiar with. I talked now and again with various people in the audience while I was a member of it before my presentation, and they seemed a bright, motivated, friendly group. My final thought on the event is that I threw too much that was new at them, and didn't simplify as well as I could have where I should have. If I ever get to do a presentation on the same material, I expect to do much better.
One simple rule I knew but forgot, as I so often do: have one aim only in a presentation or the equivalent, and don't veer from it. I want to get power point and learn how to use it. Something like that would have helped a lot. As it was, I had to deal with an overhead projector and transparencies, which requires several more steps per image than the single click power point does (I think) and a slide projector (once set up) does, I know.
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