Each student will teach the class for one day. In the first week, you'll sign up for a day of class and a text, which you will proceed to become an expert on. On your chosen day, you'll be in charge, lecturing to the class and leading the discussion. The balance between lecture and discussion is up to you, but you should choose whichever is most effective. In other words, you should lead discussion in such a way that we all learn something. To the extent that you lecture, you should work hard to make your lecture compelling and memorable. In either case, you should be presenting us an interesting and unique insight into the material, as opposed to simply summarizing it. Overall, you're teaching should completely fill 30 - 35 minutes of class time.

In addition to leading the class, you will prepare a "précis" for your text and distribute it to the class no later than the class meeting prior to your day. This is a short text that captures the essential concepts and tone of the original text. Your precis isn't a summary, per se. For example, you wouldn't frame your comments with something like, "In Little Brother, Cory Doctorow argues that ..." Instead, write as though you are the author, preparing a very, very short version of your source text -- around 300 words should be plenty. The key is to get at a specific perspective or set of concepts that you think are central to understanding the text. Obviously, this set of concepts should also be the focus of your teaching.

The précis is due on the day of class before the day you teach. For example, if you teach on a Friday, the précis should be on the website no later than the previous Wednesday.

To create a précis, click the "Create Content" link under your navigation menu, and select "Précis." Complete the appropriate fields, including the class meeting date when you'll be teaching and the text itself. Also, you may include other material you'd like us to have beforehand. You may want to upload an outline document or even a powerpoint file, although if you do you use a slideshow, I'd strongly recommend using Google Docs or Slideshare to host your presentation online. Finally, include any bibliographic references to any other texts you'll be including in your teaching. If these aren't already in our Bibliography, you can add them first.

After you lead, a respondent will present his or her point of view.

After class, I'll prepare an evaluation for you and post it on the class website.

Your précis will comprise 35% of your grade for this assignment, and the remaining 65% will be determined by adding up your scores on the attached rubric. (Each item is scored on a scale of 1 - 5 to add up to 65 total.)