English 12 Demo

Impress me with your searching ability and create a presentation on the Written Word. Go back as far as you can. When did writing start? How has it evolved? Where is it headed?

Many students do a great job documenting the early stages of written communication and then completely leave out the last few hundred years and where they think things are heading. Don't be one of them.

Your presentation may take the form of a slideshow (Google Presentation/Prezi...); Research Paper (See Research Resources); Google Sheet with Motion Chart; Detailed Timeline (TimeGlider/TimeToast); Screencast Presentation with audio; or anything else you want to try (get it approved first though). This is your chance to try out a tool you've always wanted to, or to focus on one that you really like.

This is a chance to be creative and you will be sharing it with the class for discussion. There aren’t going to be too many more directions or limitations on this assignment other than to say that it should be thorough and aesthetically pleasing. If you have questions email, or we can talk about it.

Special Note: Since this presentation may not have any extra context to it (as far as you speaking while giving it [though you can provide a voiceover in Prezi]), you'll need to make sure that you provide even more clarity and information in your slides. While a typical audience may be familiar with some of the terms, they would certainly need more background info on what some of the terms are. You may want to consider narrating your presentation while making a screencast so you can set the pacing for it and talk about your slides as you click through them. Then you can submit the video as your presentation.

Don't forget a Works Cited page/slide/clip (if you're not sure how that should look, check out the OWL page for MLA citations; both have menus to click on for whichever type of resource you're using). No matter what type of presentation you are working on, you will be using outside sources, so make sure you give proper attribution. Assignment submissions without a works cited page will not be accepted.

One final piece of advice: Remember, this is a presentation on the Written Word, not Language(s). Including information on the spoken word isn't really relevant. This presentation should be more about how ideas are documented and shared in a visual format.

At the end of your submission, skip a few lines and assign yourself a grade. Why do you think that you've earned that grade? Is there a part of your submission which could be improved?

You will be graded according to this rubric.

Image by Alejandro Escamilla via Unsplash / CC0