Essay 3 - Presentation Instructions

Essay 3 will be broken into two submissions of the final product:

1. A 750-word essay, and
2. A pecha kucha presentation

These are instructions for the second part of Essay 3 -- a Pecha Kucha presentation based on your essay.

For the mandatory presentation in Pecha Kucha style, you will use PowerPoint but with some rules: everyone is required to use 5 slides that auto-advance every 20 seconds. You will have exactly 1 minute 40 seconds to present your analysis of a social media platform. Think SHORT, INFORMAL, and CREATIVE. You’re not trying to present the details of your final essay; you’re telling a story about why both the essay and the social media app are interesting. Don’t be afraid to play around: The idea here is that the form’s restriction promotes creativity.

In PowerPoint or a comparable program, set up a presentation with 5 slides.  Each slide should feature ONE image per phrase. You really should think in terms of phrases, not sentences. You will need to think through what goes on each slide.  Guy Kawasaki suggests no font smaller than 30 points Links to an external site. on a slide. His reasons are pretty compelling: You want the slides to complement your presentation, not dominate it.

Set the program so that your slideshow advances every 20 seconds, without any input from you. (For help on this in PowerPoint, see Jason B. Jones’ handy how-to article Links to an external site. — scroll down.)

The result is that you have 1 minute, 40 seconds to tell your story. You now need to rehearse your presentation so that your commentary is linked to the slides, and to revise your slides, especially the text, to make it compelling to your audience.

You might consider these two web pages on improving presentations: Merlin Mann’s “How I Made My Presentations a Little Better Links to an external site.” and AQ’s “Guide to Better Pecha Kucha Night Presentations Links to an external site.” (Here’s an alternate link Links to an external site. for the AQ guide.) (In particular, note AQ’s recommendation that one spend about 6 hours on making the slides.)

Since we will have 23 presentations, we cannot afford tech failures. It’s best to test your tech prior to the final exam meeting. You may even want someone else to test it on a different laptop just to make sure. Failure to present during the appointed time will result in a zero on the entire final project. No exceptions.

Note: Explanation and description of pecha-kucha presentation borrowed from Jason B. Jone’s ProfHacker article, “Challenging the Presentation Paradigm Links to an external site.,” Nov 2009).

Presentation, Submission & Grading

Since this is a presentation, you will be graded based on a presentation rubric Download presentation rubric. Failure to follow the Pecha Kucha format (I'm serious about the one image per phrase) will result in at most a D on this presentation. You may not touch your laptop. The slides *must* auto advance. During your presentation, you may use notecards but be sure to make eye contact with your audience, project your voice, and avoid looking at the screen. Rehearsal is *required* in order to earn an A on this presentation.

Because this presentation is worth 50 points, below is the letter grade breakdown according to points (in case you want to keep it straight).

45-50 points = A

40-44 points = B

35-39 points = C

30-34 points = D

0-29 points = F

Remember, the other half of the grade comes from the actual essay itself. It will also be graded on this point scale.

To submit to Canvas, upload the presentation file or insert a URL where you have created the presentation. (Google Drive offers a free presentation platform. You can simply share that URL for submission and grading.)

You must submit both portions of this essay in order to receive a grade. Failure to present on the day of the presentations will earn a zero on the entire final project (including the essay). Failure to submit an essay, even if you present, will earn a zero on the entire project.