The semester is more than half-done and there’s only a little over a month until research papers and videos are due. So Thursday’s class will be about figuring out where we’re up to, making sure everyone has drafted their literature review and that everyone has a plan for how to structure their paper. Students who complete their literature reviews and indicate a clear direction for their further research – and post this to their blogs before midnight on October 18 – will receive individual written feedback from me as well.

Looking at the schedule ahead this is really our only chance to work together on our projects before the presentations on Oct 27 and 29. I’ll ask students to sign up for presentation slots today. Here’s what I want you to do in these presentations:

• Prepare a five minute presentation of your research paper. You may use powerpoint or show websites if that’s helpful.
• Make sure you tell us the following:
  • What is your research question?
  • What have other researchers written about this previously?
  • What is your point of view? Your conclusion?
• This is a presentation of your research paper, not of your video. Make your video afterwards!
• You will need to blog documentation of your presentation. This can be the full text of your talk, powerpoint slides (post them to slideshare.net) or you can record your talk on video and post that to your blog.

After each presentation, we’ll have time for a little discussion and feedback.

Don’t start working on your videos until you’ve done a lot of work on your research paper. We’ll view drafts of videos in our last class, on November 12.