Oral Presentations (200)

When I formally introduce this assignment during class, sign up to deliver a 15-minute presentation on two of the following four general topics.

1. Memory and Knowledge in the Classical Era
2. Scarcity and Knowledge in the Medieval Era
3. Conformity and Knowledge in the Mechanical Era
4. Emergence and Knowledge in the Digital Era
   

Criteria
Your presentation will begin with a longer-than-usual, richly-linked blog entry due at least 24  hours before your assigned presentation date. Your blog entry will be assigned reading for the class, so your in-class presentation should not simply involve reading the words you have already posted to your blog.  The advance reading should prepare the class to have a meaningful discussion about the issue(s) you raise during the class presentation.

• Demonstrate the ability to choose a specific case study.
  
• "How people used to read back in the day" is too vague.
  
• "How the Protestant Reformation affected public attitudes towards reading in England" is a little better.
• "Anti-catholic bias in British accounts of the history of the printing press" is very specific.
  
• Demonstrate your ability to build a compelling, accurate case for multiple different perspectives on ways to look at an issue. (You don't have to pretend to be objective, but you should try to choose a topic that is likely to divide the opinion of the class, and you should emphasize the strengths of the positions you reject, and acknowledge the weaknesses of the positions you support.)
  
  
• Demonstrate your ability to use your media skills to find relevant sources (online and offline, academic articles and, where appropriate, conduct original interviews).  I would welcome a podcast, video presentation, narrated slide show (with appropriate credit given to the images), or just a clever and effective use of web links.

Note:

The sequence of assignments leading to the midterm paper and the term paper also includes oral workshop presentations, but those factored into your grade for the papers.