My IOP was about dogs in the novel Disgrace. "The dogs in Disgrace represent the state to which South Africa and its people have been reduced to." Was my thesis. I started off by acting out the metamorphosis of a human into a dog while All I Need by Radiohead played the background. I used a power point presentation to guide both me and the audience through the presentation as smoothly as possible.
All forms of public speaking are healthy for students in high school because it has high importance in most high-end jobs. Preparing and watching all the Individual Oral Presentations really opened my eyes to how easy it is to seem boring in front of a crowd of students. I, personally, have a hard time speaking well in public about things Im not passionate about. I like that the IB has diversified its assessment methods because it gives fair chance for those that might not do so well in written tests, to get some grades as well. Im sure that most of my colleagues feel the same way about the IOP itself, what worries me however is the way we approached this project. Between the IOP proposal, IOP assigned dates, IOP assigned questions, evaluating answers, watching the presentation, righting comments, and self assessment the actual presentation is lost. Instead of this project being a chance to discuss different topics/takes on the novels it became a long check-list of different evaluation combinations. The presentations became robotic and empty like dictation. This however is not completely because it really shows you all the mistakes you might have done. I learned many things about public speaking and preparing for important presentations especially since I had to go through the process twice. It feels great on the other hand to be over and done with them.
