Technology Task 2: Life-long Learning

Presentation

As a team, prepare and present an 18-minute talk to your classmates on a modern library or framework related to your technology area. Your presentation should be pedagogical in nature. That is, your aim is to educate your classmates on some topical aspect of your technology area. Your classmates will all fill out a survey on the quality of your presentation.

For example, an HTML/CSS group could present on the newest aspects of the HTML 5 or CSS 3 standards, or on some popular templating framework (eg Foundation, Bootstrap, Fluid Baseline, etc). A JavaScript group could present the use of jQuery or some other popular JavaScript library (eg Backbone.js). A Ruby group could present on the use of some popular gems (eg Shoulda, Nokogiri, Cucumber, Capistrano) or related technologies (eg HAML).

In order to avoid multiple presentations on the same topic, you must confirm with the instructor your choice of topic. If your topic has already been taken, you will have to choose a different one.

Requirements on Materials

Your materials should include, at a minimum:

A clear statement of learning objectives (ie a mini-syllabus for your presentation). This statement does not need to be part of your presentation, but must be part of your submission materials.
Audio-visual support (eg slides, videos, …).
Handouts (eg example programs, cheatsheets,…).
Interactive elements (eg "Your turn" problems, demos,…).
Questions to assess student understanding that could be used on a final exam. You should include several different problems that cover different levels of Bloom's taxonomy.

Requirements on Involvement in Presentation

The presentation should be coordinated as a single cohesive lecture. Every team member is responsible for contributing to the lecture script and materials. The responsibility to actually present each part of the lecture must be worked out ahead of time and clearly dilineated. You have very limited time, so the lecture needs to be carefully choreographed so as to not waste any time in speaker transitions.

Everyone will be involved in the development of 2 different presentations: The lecture described in this technology task and the final project presentation at the end of the semester. Not every member of a technology team need to talk during the technology lecture. Similarly, not every member of a project group will need to talk during final project presentation.

However, it is required that every student do some talking (> 5 minutes) in front of the class! Therefore, if you choose not to talk during the technology lecture, you must do some talking during the final project presentation. Of course, you can choose to talk in both presentations, but bear in mind that with a limited time slot, no more than 3 people can realistically be involved in the talking part of the technology lecture.