CTE EXPO Reflection (Senior Year)

     A CTE Expo is an exposition for a CTE academy - a display of what the academy is about and what it's students do. The purpose of the expo is to give necessary information to students interested in joining a CTE academy to help them decide which one to join. Our main objective wasn't to convince students to join, rather, it was to help students showing interest in joining an academy by providing information they can use to make up their mind.
     In sophomore year, to prepare for the expo I prepared a cardboard presentation of business cards to show off how that year of the academy was about visual design. Junior year was about showing off digital design, so I prepared my digital portfolio and had JS games I made on display. This year was my final year of doing CTE EXPOs so I prepared by making a definitive portfolio, a website with all my work from the previous years up until now in it including VD. To show that what I learned in VD really helped me design websites, I spent a lot of time making the styles for this definitive portfolio attractive, importing necessary fonts, making stunning graphics, playing around with spacing, and other things to make it the most attractive in terms of visuals. Then, I focused on adding animations to my site wherever it enhanced the experience, my loading screen being the animation I'm most proud of. The loading screen fires when the site first loads and consists of my initials being drawn on the screen, just like an artist signing their painting. It helps show it's my portfolio and it puts some of my more impressive coding skills on display. I needed to have something fun the students could do when I showed off my work so I decided on having my APCSP create task and WCP whack-a-mole games open in separate tabs. Not only were they fun games I could let others play but they showed off what we did in DD and WCP, respectively. Finally, I needed to make myself presentable for the expo. This didn't only mean wearing a nice attire but figuring out how to greet the interested students, how to describe what I've done so for, etc. I prepared an elevator pitch in Googe Docs which I practiced in front of a mirror to introduce myself to the students. I decided I would go straight into my work, asking the student questions or taking questions from the student along the way.
     During the actual expo, I tried to use my plan, however, it became tough to implement because the students were a bit tough to talk to. Many didn't talk a whole lot and conversations with them were a bit dry. Some things did go well, my ability to interest the students with my work. Though our conversations were lacking, what I needed to communicate, I eloquently did not through words but through display of my work. If my elevator pitch didn't hook the students' interests, it was definitely the various games I had on display for them. Still, some things could've been improved on my part, most notably my enthusiasm. While the students were definitely listening to me and playing my games, I could've gotten them more excited. Only a few students seemed to be getting pumped and that could be due to the tone of my voice or my speech being too boring. I could perhaps improve by practicing my speeches, making sure that my voice gives off the same energy I want the students to feel and using less complicated, more exciting words. 
     My overall feeling about the expo is that it went well. I was able to do my job of informing the student about the academy very well and the other presenters did a great job as well. We were able to ensure the interested students were able to take away information about the academy to make their decision so we were able to execute the purpose of the expo. We were professional all throughout the expo and despite a few faults we were able to engage the students.