Cyberfair: Tech Scout Reflections

This past semester we created the Cyber Fair, in which we had to present our work to all the division II students, in the third and fourth floor. This was created in order to identify and deliver technical services to the school comunity. ... I felt very positive about our Cyber Fair. I think I did fairly well in explaining my project. I liked that the students tried to stay focused even if they really weren't interested. They were very supportive, and gave me ideas on how to make my project better and more interesting. I think that I really worked hard this term, and the work I did show this. Near the end I felt tired, and I started losing some interest, but I was able to overcome that and explain my work step by step. The things that I didn't like was that some students found this as an opportunity to get out of class and didn't really care about what was being taught.

- Keila Taveras

All and all I feel the cyberfair went well. I found that each group was focused on carrying out their tasks including my group. My task for the cyberfair was to show students what spreadsheets and graphs are, and how they can be used to show the progress of a person or group on different areas. I personally tried to show each group that came to our kiosk as much as I could in the limited amount of time. I feel that in the beginning stage of the cyberfair (first morning when we had the cyberfair) I was anxious & excited to show students what the tech scouts had done all year. My presentation in the beginning process wasn't so clear and engaging to the other students. As I got more comfortable presenting my groups kiosk I got better at getting the students attention and engagement.

But I should say that getting the students attention and also that of the teachers wasn't an easy task. I feel my kiosk which showed the process of making graphs to log progress and also showed the history of the tech scouts wasn't as engaging and exiting as let's say David's kiosk, where the students and teachers had an opportunity to see animated visuals of CPESS and also have a chance to create their own visual. Also in my presentation I had to speak about the whole history of the tech scouts and how we came about making the cyberfair. Most of our presentation was just me and Christina talking and trying to get the students to understand what we were saying, so, it wasn't that engaging to begin with. But at the end I think Christina and I were able to present our project clearly and get the students engagement as much as we could.

-Alex Torres

Last month in February we had our first CPESS Cyber fair ever. It was very successful in involving the CPESS community with the techscouts. During the fair my team and I presented our project which was the " clickable CPESS" by us explaining the project it gave us more of sense of the usefulness of using Hyperstudio. The presentation also made me realize the importance of working for the community, this is why I chose my next project to be very community oriented.

The day of the exhibition most of us were nervous,anxious, but most of all I was ready! I wanted to get it over with, after our project had been ready a month before then, we were practicing for the fair. I had already memorized the words 'this is a self authoring multi-media...blah,blah,blah.'Our project just sat there on Tuesday morning just waiting o be presented. It was already 9:30 and the class was not yet ready. By about 9:40 the first group of students were waiting outside in the hall, waiting to enter. I went out with Bram to greet them and explain to them what they were about to witness, and our expectations on the tours. I gave out sheets of papers they were to fill in after the presentation,everyone was assigned a station or kiosk. It was two to three kids to a sation. We were lucky enough to have kids who behaived pretty well. They were very attentive and respectful, they gave their full attention to us and asked questions. As the day progressed it became eisier to present with more confidence and clarity. Although it seemed the later on the day it became, the less serious people were taking the work.

From the feedback we received it seems our work conveyed to our viewers exactly what we wanted it to. Most of them had the same discription. For example " The exhibit was an electronic guide to CPESS. I liked it. It was pretty well made and it looked very profesional. The exhibitors were able to talk intelligently, they answered all of my questions without any problem. They were great". This kind of comment made me feel like if I did my job well. Although there were other kids who were not as through with their answers, some just said " the exhibit was about CPESS" and did not even bother to answer any other questions. This shows either their disinterest in our work, or that they were bored and decided not write about it. Either way I was not expecting everyone to contribute the same way.

-Marina Tavarez

I think that the cyber fair was very successful, because each visiting student learned a lot of things about some software. Not only the students learned something, we learned something too. For example, I learned that to make a good presentation you need good preparation and good evidence. By the students comments we had some feedback about our exhibits. I think that by getting feedback about the exhibit we learned how to make the presentation fun and better for our viewers. This cyber fair was a good experience for all the techscouts. It was something that we haven't done before, and a good experience for the future.

In this past semester I have learn more about computers, more than I expected. They were good experiences and I enjoyed learning how to work with a nice group of people. I think that the group work was very strong and there was good communication between everybody. This was the first time that I have been in a class where everybody had a good communication with each other and a good understanding of everyone. By the end of the year I think that we should do another cyber fair. This cyber fair made us popular and now all most the whole school wants us to help them! By having another Cyber fair we can present the different groups and what we have done.

-Christina Feliciano

I was coordinator for the Cyber Fair. I felt I did a good job doing this but I could not have done it without the help of my fellow peers and techscouts. During the Cyber Fair I gave a little discussion of what the class was about and what our major goal is within the techscouts. I also helped Tyron and Pablo with certain instances within their "CPESS ON The Net" presentation. Since I was working on my own webpage they would refer to me and I would show the people they were presenting to the language the webpage is written up in.

I enjoyed the Cyber Fair a lot and I felt it was successful. ... When we read the responses to our presentation we were shocked at how well we did. In fact one of my groups most favorable responses were from Teniqua Grant. She felt she learned a lot about the language of writing webpages. She felt creating a webpage is something she would like to look into! Noelani Love was also a good reference to a response she felt that she got a good comprehension of what we tried to get across and wanted to learn more from our presentation.

Also from the responses we learned that we should of added some more visuals which people like to see. that was to main things we should of added within the CPESS webpage. I learned personally that we should have tried to get each and every single person to get engaged within our presentation. Like I said earlier I thought the Cyber Fair was a big success!!!

-Jason Concepcion

Ana, Marina, and I work on a project called 'Clickable C.P.E.S.S.' We started this project sometime last year in the old semester. It took us like two months to get it completed and ready for the Cyberfair. ... The project that we did was on a program called Hyper Studio. When we had the Cyberfair we had to explain the viewers which is our audience what the project is, how we did it and how to work it. After they saw our project they had to answer a response sheet.

The most favorable response to our exhibit was a response when the person said that we explained everything clearly, answered all of the questions she wanted to ask and how it taught that certain viewer to learn how to use the computer in a whole new different way. The young viewers also said we had a clear presentation. From what I read of the responses I noticed I learned quit a few things that would've made our project more successful. We could've warned them by saying " we know you know our school already, but we' re just showing you another way how to use the computer and how you could use this program for you portfolios.

Even though the young viewers were kind of bored from the presentation, I think they learned quit a lot. I also learned quit a few things from some viewers. My overall reaction to the 'Cyberfair' is thought it was kind of fun. At some points and time it was getting pretty boring because we kept saying the same thing over and over. But other then that it was fun.

-Veronqie Maith

Initially when I chose Tech Scouts I wanted to learn more about computers and the Internet and WriteNow. The program I knew best was Superpaint. I chose making views of the school because it would be fun.Then when we looked at the Cyberfair I decided to show people how to use Superpaint. I learned Hyperstudio and was able to make new cards and buttons and link them.

I developed a presentation with Keila. We talked about who would go first, whether it would be on one computer or two. We decided for two so that one could be used for the viewers to work on their own stacks, leaving our stack on the other one. The first day of the Cyberfair was very hard because I wasn't used to speaking to them about the project. It was easier when the viewers asked questions. But this got easier as we continued. At one point I turned around and noticed I drew a little crowd when I was showing what I designed, and eveyrone commented that they liked it and wanted to be shown how to do it. I think this was on the first day.

I didn't experience any students who were disrespectful. There was one group that was very bored, didn't try to make a painting or anything. That hurt - I wondered what I did wrong. But the next group was fine. I think they came in with their own attitudes. From this experience, I learned how to focus on a presentation and speak more clearly. ... I think the Cyberfair helped me help the school. In the beginning of this class I didn't know anything about computers - now people ask me for help. That builds up my self confidence. It makes me happy. There are now students at CPESS that know I can use Hyperstudio and SuperPaint and come to me when they want to learn it.

-David Diaz

For the Cyberfair, I showed the CPESS website. I didn't have any major role in making it, but I knew everything Tyron did because I'd watched him work a lot and he explained things to me. The first day of the fair was confusing because I didn't know how to explain what I knew to the Division 2 kids. In the beginning I was showing how I learned HTML and they were bored. I talked about all the different things you could put on a web page, and showed them HTML. They were impressed with HTML and how difficult it was to make things happen. They were amazed with the code.

They really liked the digital camera and seeing pictures of themselves. The second day was much easer because I learned what gets their attention. We tried give them opportunities to help us upgrade the web page, but nobody came back to us. We didn't have Claris Home Page at that time, so it must have seemed to hard for them. I remember one kid not paying attention - he really didn't want to be there. I gave him a short version. There were some girls who were really interested, wanted to know how we got all our information and how we learned the language, how we got access to all the neat things like the camera, how long it took us to make it. We learned a lot faster than they guessed we did.

My presentation skills have really improved from this - I never thought I could present to people I didn't know. I feel I served the school because a lot of kids are now hoping to take this class when they get to the Senior Institute. Teachers didn't know that this class existed or what we were doing before the Cyberfair, so now they can spend more time with us.

- Pablo Morales