Essay Four
For this essay, you will work in a group of three or four people and give a presentation on
one of the main topics of this class. Your presentation should be 15 minutes long (this
should leave 5 minutes for questions). It will have an oral, written, and visual
component. The oral and visual components are your presentation and the
question/answer session following it. The written component is your script for the
presentation. The visual component will be a PowerPoint and any handouts.
The script: your script should be six double spaced pages (1,800 words). Divide the
body of the script into three of four sections (depending on how many people are in your
group), each of which cover an aspect of your topic. Each group member would then be
in charge of researching that section. But your entire group should revise and edit all the
sections together, so that the presentation has a unity, organization, and natural flow. In
addition to the sections, the script should have an introduction that informs the audience
of the topic and the aspects of the topic that will be discussed. The conclusion might
point toward the future, reveal an unexpected connection between the sections, or touch
on other aspects of the topic that were not discussed. You will turn in an electronic copy
of your script as well as a working hardcopy of your script that you used during your
presentation. The latter could be a full or shortened version of your script with
highlighting, notes, etc., on paper or note cards. Unlike the full version, the shortened
version will not contain parenthetical citations of your sources or a works cited page.
Visuals: The PowerPoint should combine images, text, and at least one chart, graph, or
diagram. It should NOT contain the full text of your script. Rather, it will contain key
points, headers, and quotations. The PowerPoint should also have a works cited slide or
slides. Use handouts for any visual aid that is difficult to read on a PowerPoint slide, such
as a graph. We will be discussing how to use PowerPoint on Tuesday, November 13th in
the lab.
Topic Proposal: For this assignment, the topic proposal will be an in-class activity. It
will be in the form of a PowerPoint presenting the aspects of your topic you plan to
discuss, the main points you plan to hit on in each section, and the sources you plan to
use. As this is a research project, you will probably require several sources for each
aspect of the topic. The topic proposal will be due at the end of class on November 15.
Before coming to class that day, you will need to meet with your group to decide what
sections will be covered and who will be primarily responsible for researching each one.
Rough Draft: A rough draft of your script and PowerPoint will be due the Tuesday after
Thanksgiving. The peer review will be conducted in class that day.
Grading: The essay is 15% of your total grade, 10% of which will be the script and 5%
of which will be the visuals. The oral presentation is 5% of the total grade. All students
will get the same grade on the essay unless I have reason to allocate grades individually.
Topics:
1. The history of the encyclopedia genre
 The first encyclopedia(s)
 Encyclopædia Britannica
 Wikipedia and the future of the genre
2. Intellectual Property
 Copyright
 The Public Domain
 Piracy
3. The Open-Source Movement
 Proprietary software
 Open-source software
 Free software
4. Writing Machines
 The printing press
 The pen
 The typewriter
 The computer
5. The origins of writing
 Symbolic writing
 Pictographic writing
 Phonetic writing
6. Virtual Reality
 Virtual worlds
 Augmented Reality
 Applications
7. Web 2.0
 Social Networking
 User-generated content
 XML vs. HTML
8. Oral Cultures
 The ancient Greeks
 Modern oral cultures
 Secondary orality (oral forms within literate cultures)