TEDx Talks Story Critique

For my first story critique I thought I would keep with the theme of the readings I completed this week.  I found a TEDx Talk by Jessie Wooley-Wilson that aimed to look at blending technology and education. For this critique I will be using the following evaluation traits:

1. Flow, Organization, and Pacing
2. Media Application
3. Sense of Audience

Flow, Organization, and Pacing:  I think the presenter in this talk did a nice  job with the flow and organization of this presentation.  I particularly liked the fact that she went in and out of personal experiences and stories back to the subject matter that she was discussing.  She spoke at an appropriate pace, with appropriate pauses throughout the presentation, making sure that the audience could follow along but without putting them to sleep.  The stories she told in between presenting new ideas were relevant to the information she was giving and helped to keep the flow of the speech going.

Media Application: During her speech, she used only one media application, which was a screenshot of a website that students can use to help with understanding math skills.  While this screenshot  was relevant to what she was discussing, it left me as an audience member with something to be desired.  As a presenter that is supposed to be showing the importance of blending technology and education, there was very little technology to augment the points she was making.  I would have liked to see more interactive uses of the technology she was speaking of or at least a greater number of screen shot examples.  It was hard for me to buy in to her ideas on technology without seeing technology in use during her speech.  There was also a point in which she had a slight technical difficulty (it seemed as though she projected a slide which was not intended to be shown during her speech) which, again, almost made her lose credibility as a presenter.

Sense of Audience: I spoke earlier of the way in which the presenter included personal stories and anecdotes in her speech.  I felt as though this helped her connect to her audience as (I assume) educators.  It made what she was presenting feel more relevant and personal to me as an audience member.  That being said, when I began watching the talk, I was under the impression that I would be given new ideas as to how I can blend technology into my educational practices.  Throughout the talk, she spoke of website that can learn about you and adapt to your needs as a learner while you work through problems using a number of different pieces of data.  This was not new information to me  (although, I assume it might have been to some audience members), but what I was really struck by was the lack of follow through when it came to ideas of how to implement such websites into daily lessons.  She did give some impressive statistics from one classroom that successfully blended technology into their daily routines, but stopped short of explaining just how that was done.

All things considered, this was a good speech.  I was touched by her stories and I agreed with the point she was trying to get across.  It was and interesting and brief speech that kept my attention throughout.  The only modifications I would suggest would be the use of more media to support her thoughts, and some more examples of useful technology and meaningful suggestions as to how one might implement such technologies.