Final Papers and Presentations

Your presentations should be from 10 to 12 minutes long.

• Start by giving a summary of what your paper is about. The first thing you should do is let the class know your thesis -- what theory you aim to prove, or what range of work you are analyzing and what questions you aim to answer about it. If you are reading your thesis right from your paper, be sure to rephrase it in more conversational terms after reading it. Your thesis should be about questions, not answers -- get us into it by showing there is a problem that you are seeking to solve.
• Then, you should go through a few examples from your paper that support your thesis. For instance, if your thesis involves the fact that education in the classroom has been transformed, for better or worse, by the use of technology, you should have about three solid examples of this. You should have pros and cons -- you should try to look at your examples from different angles. If the examples are not answering questions for you, they will not be interesting to anyone else.
• For your conclusion, you should return to your thesis -- rephrase it if you'd like once again to remind us what you said earlier. Then show how the examples support or negate your thesis, and tell us what you've concluded.

The easiest way to think about is that you are telling a story. Try to make it conversational. Make eye contact with the class, use your own speaking voice. Your presentations in class have been pretty good so far so don't worry too much about it.

New terms: it is a sign to me that you have done a lot of work on your paper if you introduce terms that we are unacquainted with. Sometimes, these terms might seem quite simple -- the term "cool," for instance, has a very different meaning for advertisers than it does for us -- so you have to let us know that you are using it in a different way.

If you are using multimedia: don't show any videos or anything that lasts much longer than 3 minutes unless necessary. Make sure it is well integrated into what you are saying about your thesis. Make sure you introduce the video properly, and also comment on the video after it is done. This also goes for long passages you are quoting, etc. Put the videos on your blog so you can access them quickly.

Hand-outs/PowerPoint: you can use hand-outs for items that need to be seen visually, or you could use a PowerPoint presentation, but don't rely on the Powerpoint to do the work for you. Don't use silly graphics with PowerPoint for the sake of it, only if you think it helps set the mood for your presentation.

Question and Answer Period: Every student in the class should pay close attention to the presentation and I expect everyone to have a question for the presenter. Please don't be absent for class on these two days. You don't have to ask a question for every presenter, but I'll be keeping track of who is asking questions during the two days of presentations.

Research Papers: These papers should be well researched and constructed like a proper paper, with an introductory and concluding paragraph, etc. The style need not be academic or dry, but should be thoughtful and coherent. These papers should be from 6-8 pages long (visual supplements do not count in the page count). Please don't use any filler; stick to your points and keep it lean. Put any visual aids for your paper on your blog so I can refer to them.

Format style: All papers should be in 12 point type (in Times Roman or similar font with serifs) with 1.5 spacing and 1 inch margins. They will be marked down if not in this format. Research papers should have the proper biography and footnotes where applicable.