Genius hour presentation

Genius hour is one hour where you search/ create different  things  and ideas. In our tech class our teacher decided to do so and later do a presentation on our discoveries. I decided to do my presentation on Autism and the misconceptions that come with it. I decided to chose this topic as personally I have an autistic cousin and I feel like he is misunderstood in this world. That is why I started researching about it and I ended up learning a lot. 

Before telling you what I learned let me first give you the official definition of autism which has been defined by oxford dictionary: It is  a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior.

The 4 main misconceptions which I learned about are:

  • The thought that an autistic kid is not smart as this is not true many of them are geniuses. In fact the computer you are looking at right now would have not been here if it was not because of many autistic brilliant people who work in the field. There are many geniuses in the world who were and are autistic.
  • Another thing is that autistic people are often said to be scary. Once again its not true they are like you and me except nicer and in there own better world. So we should be the ones who are scary.
  •  Another thing that some people say is that autism is contagious. Again not true it is a genetic disorder not an disease.
  • They are not capable of love. That is totally untrue they just have another way to show it.

Not only did I learn a lot about the subject  but it also helped me grow as a person. I was able to  deepen two new skills. The first one was compassion as for my project I had to look at various documentary on autistic children. I had to feel compassion in order to understanding all that some where facing in this misunderstanding world. Another thing that I learned was not to judge so easily as part of this investigation was having to read and think about all these people who were them judging autistic people too quickly. I had to try and understand as they thought differently then me. These both skills will help me for future projects and for everyday life.  

I acquired new skills however this was not the goal of my presentation I was hopping that this will impact my community. First of all this presentation impacted my classmates as they directly were told the information. With this information they can do whatever they want but some of them might continue on and tell someone the right thing when a misconception is said on autistic children. As well as they can pass on knowledge this will be vital as then the misinformed will be informed and so on and so forth. This will hopefully reduce the risk of hostility towards autistic people.

In my next presentation I will focus on Autism in Senegal. I will take it up a notch by going and helping out with children who have autism. Understanding what happens in early ages of autism and how to distinguish it will be my main focus. This time however I will directly impact the autistic children by helping them and talking with parents. I hope that by doing this I will show that I care about them.

Interesting things and links attached to visit about: Autism and Myths on Autism as well as check out my presentation if you have time: Genius Hour Presentation.
I advice you to do the same have fun and be creative!

 

 

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