2017 TED Talks
TEDx Talks semi-finals
In the month of March, TEDx Talks could be heard coming from all English classrooms throughout the Wiregrass campus.
A TEDx Talk is, according to their website, is “…a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less).”
TEDx Talks at WRHS are devoted to the same purpose. Students spread their ideas through combining a speech with a visual component, either a PowerPoint presentation or video. Students use their public speaking skill to prove a point, and convince the audience of their view. As well as this being a way to spread ideas, it is also a way to practice public speaking, as that is a much needed skill later in life.
Students have a lot of opinions about TEDx presentations, of which vary from being positive or negative. Joseph Engleman is a freshman at WRHS, who shares his thoughts about his experience doing TEDx Talks.
“I had fun with this project. This let me speak about subjects that I was passionate about,” Engleman said. “It let me explain why I felt a certain way about a subject, spread my ideas, and maybe even convince others of my point of view.”
Zack McGraw is a sophomore at WRHS who also has a positive view on the subject. He enjoyed the public speaking part of TEDx.
“TEDx helped me with my public speaking skills,” McGraw explained. “I was never good at speech writing, but I have improved drastically since doing TEDx for two years.”
Other students do not have such positive views of TEDx Talks, and do not look forward to the whole process. One of those students is freshman Ryan Couture.
“I feel like there is no point to TEDx. I do not enjoy writing or public speaking. All the years I have done public speaking through Tropicana Speech, and TEDx have not made me improve,” says Couture.
Regardless of the student opinions on TEDx Talks, all can agree that some of the students had a powerful message and were able to express that message because of TEDx.
Forty semi-finalists were chosen from Wiregrass classrooms and competed this past week to a 4 judge panel. You can see one of the speeches here, on our twitter page. After hearing all of the semi-finalists speeches, the judges narrowed the pool down to 10 finalists who will compete on March 29th.
The 10 finalists include: Chris Dang, Logan Fonteyn, Cameron Reed, Nicholas Suriel, AJ Persaud, Carly Norman, Monika Domensch, Cameron Igar, Dylan Nagore, and Luis Pereira.
Check back on our website for updates on this competition.
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Hello, I'm Jarvis and a writer for "The Stampede". I enjoy writing (even though I'm pretty bad at it), about student life, and global news. I'll try my...
