Yesterday was the final and live Ted Talk, and it went very well. The times I practiced the Ted talk before, it was okay, but there were some mistakes. I fixed about all of them by the final day, so I am satisfied with my presentation. One thing that I wish I did more was practice looking up, because I looked down a little too much. Also, at first I thought that kids doing a Ted Talk was a ridiculous idea, but I ended up doing after a ton of planning.
Since the start of Capstone, I knew I was going to do a Ted Talk as my final product, so I would plan it in my mind as I did the research for Capstone. When I started to work on the Ted Talk, I remembered some of the ideas that I had come up with like giving a tour of Citymaps, so I made space for it. All of the research that I have done really helped because it resulted in me continuously writing the Ted Talk and not having any trouble. I have made a lot of edits, but just minor ones like adding complex vocabulary and taking out unnecessary parts. When I finished the script, I started to practice just the talking. When I got the talking down, I had to do the hard part: doing the presentation and talking. This is a lot harder because I will have to be doing Citymaps while I’m talking. I’m going to be showing what I’m talking about on Citymaps, for example, when I get to the main map, I will say that this is the main map. I also describe and give details about what I’m showing. The main part of the presentation is a Google Slides presentation, but I won’t be doing anything interactive when the slides are up.
Very soon I will be doing my Ted Talk, so hopefully all the work will pay off!
These are the cards that have the script of the Ted Talk on them.
My main inquiry question for Capstone took a ton of research and learning, but I have it answered. Before the project, I knew some of the “What is Citymaps” part of my question, but not very deeply. I also didn’t really know anything about the part of my question about how Citymaps has grown, and now I know all about it, which proves that I’ve learned a lot from my project. My main source of research was from articles that I found through the press section of the Citymaps website. I also found a video that helped me answer a question, but not as much as the article. Even though I spent the most time reading articles, I got the most information from my interview with the co-founder and CEO of Citymaps. It was a view from the professional level for Citymaps, which made a huge difference because I had the most honest answers and from the person who knew them best.
I just finished my final presentation for Capstone, which is a Ted Talk (I will still probably make some changes). The whole entire talk is answering the main inquiry question so it was all formed from the huge amount of research that I have done.
For the Capstone project, everyone has to make an interview and a site visit. Obviously, it has to be related to the subject that a student is doing, so that students can learn more from a professional. The site visit is important, too, because it can show a lot of behind-the-scenes details of the topic someone is doing.
My interview was at the place where my site visit was: Citymaps World Headquarters. It is the HQ of the company I’m doing for capstone, Citymaps. When I got to the office (it was a main room with about 13 people, and then there were 3 other personal offices for the main executives), I met with my uncle, the co-founder and CEO of Citymaps, and he decided to give me a tour of the office. I saw his personal office, which wasn’t so huge; it was just his desk, a closet, a fireplace, and some pictures. Then we went to the balcony, where the company likes to have little parties sometimes, but it also is meant for it’s amazing view of Madison Avenue in New York City. I went into the main room and met the programmers/engineers, designers, marketing director, etc. I was very excited to see what the programmers were doing because I have always wondered how the company actually made Citymaps. I saw another little balcony that was for Friday night barbecues, and it sounded like it was lots of fun. There was also white boards everywhere for new designs to be made and ideas thought up. There was one thing about the office that really struck me, though – how the environment seemed so free. Most company offices are very serious, which makes the job boring, and people in the company are restricted to do certain things. That’s not the case with Citymaps. An example is that there is a basketball hoop right smack in the middle of the office. The employees are allowed to take a little break and play some basketball in the middle of the day! Some other examples are that one of the engineers was fiddling with a rubik’s cube while working, there is a football, and the employees are allowed to talk, crack jokes, and enjoy themselves! It reminded me of Google because I know that the Google environment is also very unrestricted and serious. I took as many pictures as I could, so I remember every bit of the office.
After the exploring the offices, I interviewed my uncle. At the very starting of the interview, we were kind of fooling around and laughing, especially myself, so I tried to calm down a little. I took some deep breaths, which made it easier to stifle the laughing. Each answer took some time because my uncle went into deep detail so that I could learn as much as possible. My mom took a video of the interview, but my uncle is also going to write out the answers to the questions so that there is writing. When I left the building, I knew a whole lot more about Citymaps than when I walked in.
