Capstone Exhibition

[DJC Reptiles]

Hi,

My school is allowing me, and a select few to study a topic of our choosing. So of course I want to do something involving reptiles. One of the reasons I got into reptiles in the first place is because of how mistreated, and poorly understood they are, same reason I like spiders. I want to change people’s perspectives on reptiles, and I would love it if any of you out there had advice on what I could do.


Thanks,

[Roman]

Could you give us some more information? What kind of project do you do? Is it an exhibition like in a museum with posters, pictures and other information the audience just walks through or is it some kind of presentation where you speak to your audience about your project? What scale are we talking about - short basic information (ie 2 or 3 posters, 15 minutes speech) or something more substantial?

[DJC Reptiles]

I’m right there with you, as of right now, details are slim. From what I know, it doesn’t matter, it can be anything you want, a presentation, a speech, it just has to be approved.

[Jim Smith]

You might want to check to see if your school has an audience response system (like Turning Point), where participants can answer questions anonymously with little clickers. The audience response systems usually work with PowerPoint and are very easy to use. You can build a short presentations with questions about snakes and let them answer then you have an excellent opportunity to open dialog about the misperceptions people have about snakes. You would of course include informational slides with photos about snakes in general (how long they live, how the reproduce, the benefits of having snakes around, what to do if they encounter a snake etc.) Just one idea...

[Roman]

Make a presentation about the reptiles native to your state (or if there are too many different species about the reptiles of your county). A brief summary about the different lizzards, snakes and tortoises without too much detail (we have x lizzards, most common is ..., biggest is ..., smallest is ..., probably something special like Heloderma, same with snakes) and pick one snake/lizard for a more detailed presentation with data about biology, distribution, habitat, behavior, how common it is, if it is venomous how many bites occurred during the last year(s) (you may ask in the local hospitals about snake bite incidents, if they know it’s for a school project they might be willing to share their data), thread level for the animal and what can be done to protect it etc.

In my experience it is more interesting for an audience if it can relate to the subject of a presentation. A presentation about keeping snakes can be interesting, but might be abstract (or even exotic) for most of them, but knowing something about an animal you might encounter in your own backyard might catch their attention.



If you explain why a snake shows a particular set of behaviors and what you can do to avoid any unnecessary incidents, how you can help to protect it and preserve it’s biotope this is probably much more interesting (and more fun) then a discussion about how to keep a snake under the best conditions.

On a general note it is always a good idea to start a presentation with something your audience should already know and expand the information from this common starting point.

[DJC Reptiles]

Thank you both, this is all very helpful. I’ll be sure to start planning soon, but as of right now I am trying to get reliable and credible sources to work with me on this. Thank you for your time,