Computer Based Research: Three assignments

1. Effectively presenting information is of the utmost importance, though it is regularly the least liked type of assignment by students. Given the option to write or present, the majority of students choose to write. Unfortunately, this means that working on considering the manner of information sharing is cut short. The act of delivery information through a presentation requires a concerted effort to be even more concise in your process as the manner of delivery can easily obscure the details when compared to reading, which allows for easy review alongside the opportunity to slow down and pause for reflection.

Post a music video that told a story to which you felt a new understanding (doesn’t have to be a deep understanding). This can either be through the lyrics or the visuals (or even both). Below the video, post an explanation on what it is that it helped you understand and how the delivery (i.e. the lyrics and/or the visuals) helped in that process.

• An extremely important caveat: there are many songs which, in their process of illustrating something about the world are also exceptionally problematic and offensive in other ways. For example, Lil Xan’s hit “Betrayed” has a chorus that notes issues around the illicit use of prescription drugs, something that is obviously of importance. On the other hand, throughout the song he utilizes exceptionally misogynistic and homophobic language. To that end, please consider the song that you’re posting and the potential implications of the lyrics/visuals and work to avoid songs/videos that may be demean others.

As a simple example:

This is the song “Carbon 7 (161)” from Jlin’s album Black Origami. I’ve long thought about bodies and movement through space within my own work, but I seldom thought about issues of movement as it pertains to dance, especially within the realm of choreography, as most dance merely elicited admiration from me for the technical skill involved. On my initial viewing of this video, I was astounded by how much of the music I didn’t even notice before because I did not consider just how integral the body and movement were to Jlin’s music, how much it is necessary to consider the full implication and potentiality. Corey Scott-Gilbert’s choreography aided in my understanding of the song that I had merely enjoyed prior and to see that one shouldn’t default to their general approach to enjoyment without considering what may be missed.

2. Second Assignment Ted Talk (Uploaded File)

3. (Another file of for this assignment will also be uploaded) For the computer skills this week, it’s time to conceptualize and approach the presentation portion of disseminating information. You’ve seen snippets of what this looks like when watching lecture videos. This week you should watch and focus on the important factors of viewing presentations in a professional manner. The following videos give you introductions and overviews into Powerpoint on how begin using them, applying the templates, and even creating custom ones.

You will use this information and, a general critical approach to TED Talks, to conceptualize the importance of presentations. From there, I want you to take these components to create a Presentation

Assignment

Using the presentation software of your choice, I want you to translate the TED Talk you watched into a slide-based presentation for conveying the information.

This exercise is to push you to consider the delicate balance between the amount of content on slides alongside the amount of lecture (i.e. talking about/beyond/over slides) a good lecture needs.

Consider when you watching a lecture, especially in-person. If there is a lot of text on the slide, you may notice most people struggling to get all of the information into their notes, usually not able to get much of anything written down from the lecture itself. This is obviously not good since the point of the additional lecture is to give the deeper understandings (text on slides for a large portion of your professors is basically “here are the headlines, listen for the important aspects of the story). On top of this, though, I find that students do not stay engaged with classes that are lecture only (i.e. no slides). One of the reasons that TED Talks can work so well with minimal slides is that ability to re-watch/pause/adjust speed. Most presentations do not occur in this fashion, though, so it’s a delicate balance. To push you to really consider where focus needs to lie, you’ll be working to translate a lecture-heavy presentation into a set of presentation slides you’d be more likely to see in one of your in-person classes.