Final Presentation Findings

The part of week 8 I found most interesting was watching the final few presentations get wrapped up and seeing all we have learned so far elaborated on and explained by our classmates. It is quite crazy to think that we are now 8 weeks into the semester with only 7 left until this class is completed. I did not really grasp the large amount of knowledge we have gained, not only about World War 2 but also about writing and thinking more analytically, until I heard all the different presentations done by my classmates. Though some presentations had similarities, such as the letters used, the topics explored, and the people researched, each person had a different idea or background to bring to the table. For example, Johnny and I did have similar sources from class, Tetsuzo, and Edik, we also had some different concepts. Johnny explored more outside of the coursework by relating information we learned in this class to his History & Politics of Education course. As for me, I looked into more of the coursework diving deeper into the ideas we focused on in class and how they were related. In regards to our writing, you can tell we have gained this new confidence for thinking and writing more analytically. When each student went up to the podium they looked confident and prepared to talk about a claim that was generated on their own about the foundational information we had read and discussed in class. As well as each student clearly elaborated deeper into the letters shown on their PowerPoint without using rehearsed speaker notes. They were all able to ad-lib about what they included to make it more of an analytical process than just summarizing. For example, Michaelah had slides that only had a portion of a letter on it, but she talked for about 5 minutes on that slide alone because she could elaborate on that content. All in all, there is a clear sense of growth in both the areas of writing and historical knowledge in week 8, which was so exciting to see.