Imagined Worlds: Do It Yourself Utopia
Weight: Digital Product (10%) + Presentation (15%)
Total: 25% of final grade
Length of Presentation: 10-12 minutes
Each group will create a complete utopia in contemporary Egypt and present it to the class as a digital product. You may choose to present it in the format of a digital poster; a PPT; a short film, or other digital format. The final product is an opportunity to show your digital media presentation abilities.
You will work in groups of 4 or 5 students each. One group member must submit all of the text that you include in your digital product to turnitin.
Points to consider:
- Background/ back story: what happened to trigger your utopia? A revolution about X? A natural disaster Y? Abandoning a corrupted society to create another? Creating a cell of change within an existing society? Where in Egypt is your utopia located?
- A unified VISION of what you want- what is the point of this utopia? What are its underlying assumptions? How did it come about? What is its rationale? WHO founds this utopia? What are the values adopted by this utopia?
- Who are the other residents? survivors? immigrants? random selection of people? How do people join and/or leave?
- Which political system governs your utopia? Who will run the utopia? a government, corporations, robots, religious authorities, elected committee? Does your utopia have a leader? How much power does this leader have?
- How does your utopia sustain itself economically?
- What is the social system like? What rights do citizens have? What responsibilities do they have?
- What about education and children? Family/marriage, reproduction?
- What role does technology play in your utopia?
- What role does the media play?
- What about religion?
- What about the environment?
- How are law and order maintained?
- What about privacy? surveillance?
- What about freedom of expression and thought?
- an understanding of the theorists and philosophers who have thought of these issues before and how your idea fits into them.
The digital product will be graded based on the following qualities:
- Content and Organization: Material is relevant, developed, engaging, logically ordered and coherent; reflects research and depth of understanding of topic
- Creativity, Attractiveness and Professionalism: Captures and maintains audience attention through original presentation of material; exceptionally attractive product; formatted in a style appropriate to the assignment, with high-quality, well-chosen visuals; free of any language/punctuation errors; citations are complete and follow MLA format
The presentation of the digital product will be graded based on the following qualities:
- Content and Organization: ideas are presented in a logical, coherent manner; ideas are developed and clearly related to the assignment requirements; shows superior understanding of purpose of assignment
- Delivery and Enthusiasm: engages audience through eye-contact, body language, confidence, appropriate volume and pacing
- Clarity and Language Use: ideas are clear, easy to understand; language facilitates audience comprehension; appropriate use of vocabulary, accurate pronunciation and grammar