Critical Thinking
Creating new ways of thinking in order to successfully orchestrate a new innovative way to complete tasks and solve problems.
Situation
In a Digital Presentations class in Fall 2018, I was given the Design Task of creating a Conceptual Prototype of a presentation in order to structure my topic and create a storyline with a problem/solution rhythm. I was intimidated by this task because I had to begin to critically think about the content and development of my topic and how I was going to identify key concepts while providing evidence to support my ideas in order to develop a presentation that makes an impact.
My Actions
The execute of making a small prototype was crucial to the development of my final presentation as it would outline the overall content of the final product. The creative process is just as important to me as the finish product, as it helps to develop a cohesive and strong presentation. While doing this I actively exercised my Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills to create a cohesive presentation that fulfilled the assignment requirements. My first step was creating the first 6 slides that only contained text. I had to critically think about what I would say about each point that I was planning to touch on in my presentation and how I would be able to expand upon these points while developing my final presentation in the future. I also had to think about how each of these text slides could stand on their own without any images to support them. This was a problem for me because I did not want to make any slides too text heavy, as I knew I could expand upon them when I created my final presentation script to memorize. I was able to use my Critical Thinking and Problem Solving skills to choose sentences for these slides that would encompass my Problem/Solution pattern of my presentation. I had to apply these skills by thinking critically about how to structure my presentation in order for it to appeal to the intended audience in the way it was intended to. I was able to accomplish this by making sure that each text slide served a specific purpose. I was able to choose words for each of my slides to convey my message while also providing evidence to support my claims which ultimately makes a successful presentation.
Once I felt confident in my texts slides, I moved onto selecting images that could stand alone to convey information and serve a purpose. For the final slide deck, no words would be used as a visual aid. Because of this the images used would have to be able to be self-explanatory while also supporting my claims and argument. I was able to further my Critical Thinking skills and also my design skills in general by selecting images that were visually appealing while also relating to each slides purpose.
Result
From this situation, I was able to learn how to critically analyze slides in order to make them successful. I was also able to further my Critical Thinking skills by curating a selection of images and meaningful sentences that would ensure my message to the audience. I was able to identify key concepts and provide evidence to support them which created a successful presentation.