Practical Details
You will turn in three reading summaries on the book you have chosen for the TED Talk/Wired essay projects (see unit one schedule for exact dates). What you will read for each summary depends upon the reading schedule your group develops. Each summary should be 500-750 words (approx. 2-3 pages, double-spaced). Each summary is worth 20 points.
Audience, Purpose, and Context
Your audience for the summary is someone who is knowledgeable about technology issues in general but who has not read the book—our class, for example. You should only summarize the main argument(s) the author makes in the chapters you have read providing only enough details and examples to help your readers understand the main arguments. That is, make sure you know what the thesis is for each chapter you have read before you start writing so that you do not get bogged down in detailed examples without ever explaining the main point of each chapter. The purpose of the summaries is to help you better understand what you have read in preparation for your group meeting discussions in class and to help you practice explaining these arguments to an audience as you will do in the talk and essay. You will not be providing analysis or commentary in your summary—that is what the talk and essay are for. However, you will end each summary with at least two questions about the reading that you would like to discuss with your group in class. These questions should be open-ended discussion questions. For example:
Clay Shirky claims that social media can act as agents of social change, such as facilitating the uprising in Egypt. If that is the case, why hasn’t the use of social media in the United States been used for social change? What is different about social media use in places like Egypt, Iran, and China that make social media powerful in ways that it does not seem to be in the U.S.?
Here is a general outline you can use for each summary:
- Begin by explaining what book you are reading and which chapters you will be summarizing in this paper.
- Write roughly a paragraph for each chapter summarizing its thesis or main point along with any significant examples and evidence that the author uses to support his thesis. Some chapters might be complex enough to warrant more than one paragraph.
- Conclude with your two discussion questions, which should be based on the chapters you just summarized.