Educational Biography

III. In-Class Presentation

Be sure to sign up for a date to give your presentation!

Assignment

Prepare and present a 10-15 minute overview of the life and education of a significant person, including a one page chronology of major events in the person's life.

Note: This is designed as a project for groups of 2 or 3 students; if you prefer to do it solo, please speak with the instructor.

Grading

The In-Class Presentation will count as 20% of your semester grade. All group members will receive the same grade, based on the quality of the final product.

It is expected that all members of a group will contribute roughly equally to the assignment--though "equal" may not imply exactly comparable research time commitments, number of words spoken aloud during the presentation, etc.

See Step-by-Step instructions, below, for details on what I'll be looking for when I grade this assignment. My Presentation Grading Checklist is available on the class website.

Background

This is the third part of our major "educational biography" project. The first part is a 7 to 10 item bibliography of information sources for your subject. The second is to prepare a critical evaluation of a book-length biography about a significant person. There are separate assignment sheets for each of the three parts. 

The objective of the overall project is for us to discover the many forms that education may take. We will accomplish this by surveying the lives of a number of significant people, as researched and presented by all the members of our class.

The objective of the in-class presentation assignmentis to present, to your peers, the results of your research into the life and accomplishments of a significant person. As indicated on the Bibliography and Critical Evaluation assignment sheets, your task is to become the class authority on your chosen person. You will need to develop more than a passing familiarity with the person's major achievements, and more than a narrowly focused outline of their "educational history." The best projects will be informed by an awareness of the social, historical, and cultural context in which the subjects lived, the admirable and not-so-admirable aspects of their character, their failures and frustrations as well as their successes and triumphs, and a critical sense of the reasons why they are (or should be) considered "significant" citizens of the world.

Ordinarily, I expect that all members of a group will have done their Bibliography and Critical Evaluation paper on the person who is the subject of the group's presentation. It's just easier that way. If you would prefer not to do it the easier way--if you really prefer to do the extra work to become expert on two significant people--I encourage you to do so. To prevent ugly misunderstandings, though,be sure your group members know you've chosen this approach. They will still expect you to contribute your fair share to this presentation.

Preparing the educational biography presentation assumes all the essential general education skills involved in the Bibliography and Critical Evaluation assignments, as well as Creative Thinking and Effective Communication through Speaking. It also assumes that you can work together on a project. This means cooperation and responsibility, but it also means communication. It may be difficult to meet physically very often to do group work. We have telephones, pagers, email, chat rooms, carrier pigeons, and other wonderful things at our disposal to help, however. You might consider using various free online chatroom and discussion board facilities to help coordinate your efforts.

Step-by-Step

Your group's work on this assignment consists of eight steps:

  1. Identify the raw facts about the person that you'll need for your presentation: your presentation should show us what kind of education this person had, how he or she obtained it, and how it influenced or shaped his or her life. If you did the Bibliography / Critical Evaluation assignment well, this is already done and readily available in your research notes.

  2. Prepare a one page chronology of major events in the person's life. This will be turned in as the cover sheet to your portfolio of research materials, after the presentation.

  3. Look over your notes and decide what things are most important to report. Draw on all the group members' work here, and critically assess one another's contributions. To paraphrase a slogan from the world of software development, "Given enough eyes, all research mistakes are shallow."
    First, you want to describe the nature of the person's education. This will involve explaining something of the historical, social, and cultural context in which the person lived, especially as a child and young adult. Be sure to distinguish and pay attention to both the formal and informal(non-classroom) education this person received. Realize that either one may have been a help, or a hindrance, to the person's full development.
    Second, you want to give us an account of how the person's education related to his or her later accomplishments. Don't neglect to tell us what they are, and how they make this person "significant." In short, your audience wants to know how an educational process helps make interesting people who they are.
  4. Consider how this person's educational biography relates to ideas we have discussed. Decide how your findings relate to points made by the writers we have studied, or are studying. You should especially consider how this person's educational process illustrates or conflicts with ideas proposed by John Dewey in Experience and Education.

  5. Organize your key ideas into a ten to fifteen minute presentation. You may use your chronology as a framework if you wish. Be aware that some members of your audience may have no acquaintance with your person at all. Remember too that this is an "educational biography" assignment, and I am looking for the indicated focus.

  6. Prepare a one-to-two page handout for the audience, designed to accompany your presentation. While you may use whatever audio-visual aids you wish to use, I require only this paper hit sheet. It may include key items from your one-page chronology, but it should not be merely the chronology!

    Our classroom has almost any other equipment your multimedia-loving heart might desire. Use it if you think it will help; don't trust it unless you feel confident that you understand it and that it will work as expected.

  7. Do a dress rehearsal before your presentation day to refine the content, practice timing, work out topic and speaker transitions, get comfortable with any equipment you want to use, and so on. You might even recruit a friend or roommate to serve as an audience for the rehearsal.

  8. Come in and show the class what you've got! (I always check my fly just before I step in front of an audience. That way I know that whatever happens, it could have been worse.) Don't forget to breathe, and have fun.

  9. Turn in your portfolio of research materials. This is a file folder containing your one-page chronology, copies of your major sources, overheads, and other materials used for the presentation. I will return all these materials to you, with a grading sheet attached.