Workshop Day: What Worked and What Didn’t
Any discussion about Workshop Day is inherently difficult — 36 different speakers were on campus and each of us only had the chance to see 3 of them.
At least 900 of you will experience another Summit, so without getting into speaker specifics, thoughts on what types of workshop speakers were appealing and which speakers weren’t? Don’t think about what they actually said… instead, respond to their speaking styles and the methods they used in presenting. Did you prefer workshop speakers who relied on Powerpoint? Did you think a workshop in which a video was showed was a waste of time — is watching a video something you can do whenever you want, or did you appreciate watching it in the workshop context?
Let us know what you think!
Tyler Mallon
This years summit topic is far too broad. I’m a senior this year and this summit more or less encompasses the past three summits altogether. I feel that this summit would have been more effective if we had taken a specific issue and examined that more thoroughly.
Feb 25, 2010 @ 8:48 AM
Anonymous
I have been disappointed by the extreme bias that has been shown in this Summit so far. I understand that the Summit is supposed to influence us to help the people that are in distress because of the issue that the Summit is about but please, I have so far not experienced any non-left opinions from any speakers. The first speaker was bordering socialism and stated that we should become more like China as everyone is treated by health care and other social programs. There was no mention of the communist state that China is and no mention of the actions the government of China takes such as kidnapping children that families were not authorized to have born. And do not challenge me saying that Father M was only saying we should take the good things from China and enact them here. He stated that we should be exactly like China and use it’s government as a model for our own. I would like to see more views from both sides instead of limiting what we see and hear to only far-left bias.
Feb 25, 2010 @ 11:30 AM
JT
Many of the speakers this year were intimate with their topics but lacked the skill set needed to be a successful presenter – monotone voice, reading off their slides, getting off-topic and talking about something people weren’t interested in, etc. Speakers should be carefully screened to ensure that their presentation will not only add something valuable to the summit debate, but also that their presentation will engage the attention of unruly high school teenage boys.
Tyler’s comment also rings true – the workshops felt unfocused. You could go from a talk on the lifestyle of refugees in the U.S. to a talk on covert American politics to a presentation on fair trade. It was a bit confusing and made it difficult to take away a few essential core messages.
From what I’ve heard, the presentations that worked the best were ones that involved student participation. Students participating in Mr. Kline’s simulation of the world market were quoted as saying, “Dude, I got screwed,” when they realized how tough it would be to play as the country they were assigned. Activities that allow students to participate instead of just listen the whole time may lead to a more active participation in summit activities in the future. Perhaps simulations, perhaps think tanks, perhaps a summit-oriented rap-battle – a creative mind could come up with all kinds of ideas. However, things that DON’T work in this vein are: online activities – as evident by this year’s website and previous years’ forums, online activities are a flop. Students generally don’t want to go home and participate in the summit, they just want to go home. Also, field trips, while better since they involve face to face contact and an actual immersion in the challenges facing the summit, aren’t going to be a main source of participation within the studentry since many students do not want to put additional time into something they’ve already been giving their attention to.
Finally, it is my personal belief that the summit should be done all at once or not at all. While it is true that spreading it out in bits and pieces does allow for more discussion, it also allows for more distractions. Students aren’t going to be thinking about how to solve the world’s problems if they’ve got a four-page English paper to write. Instead of having the summit over two weeks mixed in with classes, call all classes off for two or three or four days and devote them entirely to the summit. However, this is just my opinion, and is probably one formed with a very limited perspective since I am not aware of all the difficulties that arise with replacing school with the summit.
Feb 25, 2010 @ 7:39 PM