So I spoke for St. Matthew’s College in Cainta, Rizal yesterday. My topic is built for the geek stuff – Learning Resources for the Internet Generation. “And boy, it was a blast. There were four different sessions for the different levels in high school. So I was speaking for a good part of the day. I kinda lost my voice at that. Haha.
Anyway, I was the only speaker to cover all four sessions. There were two others but one was just for the morning session and the other for the afternoon sessions. Speaking for the whole day takes a lot. Good thing I’ve been working out so I didn’t run out of juice and air.
For the morning session, I was slated with Jaja Castro, a PR Manager for ABS-CBN and she talked about how the Net helps PR. I believe she handles key accounts like Wowowee and Pinoy Dream Academy. She shared how they reach out more to people through blogs and websites. Pretty cool talk, though I personally hate spinning for media networks and celebrities (Yeah, I hate Wowowee and their disgruntled notion of helping the Filipino masses). Well I respect her work and that’s what she’s paid to do. So I have to give her props for talking about the important point of technology use for all sorts of careers and fields.
In the afternoon session, I was paired off with John Nieves, technical editor for Gadgets magazine. Now I really had a hard time. He went first and speaking to teens with messages of gaming and gadgets would rob the thunder out of any other subsequent topic. Just the mere mention of Playstation and MMORPG had the crowd roaring. Plus it was the first time I’ve seen some guy go into a school and speak to students while waving airsoft guns and rifles. Wow. Apparently, his mom’s with the school so he got off free. I imagine doing that to some ultra-conservative Catholic school.
All in all I think I did ok. I talked about geek stuff anyway – how to use wikis, blogs, webcats, podcasts, and document managers for schoolwork is pretty boring if you’d ask me. But it’s useful stuff. I would never have landed such high grades without my Web research skills given my nagging allergies to outdated library books in UP’s Main Library.
Yeah, and I also pimped this site and a few others in my talk. Just check out the footer and background of my presentation. Hahaha.
I’m still nursing my throat. Hopefully I’d be able to recover my voice ASAP.