Energy and Society Fall'09 Class plan
		       	   (Updated)

1) Everybody will do one "News" presentation (no slides, 10min +
discussions), one short "Explain a Concept" (with slides, 15 min +
discussions) (see below for more details) and one main project (with
slides, 30 min + discussions).


2) Click on the link below to find your schedule. The five columns are for

a) Date for presnting the New article
b) Date for presenting "Explain a Concept"
c) Last date for choosing your Class Project. On or before this date, you
   should announce in the class the title of your project and say a couple of
   sentences about what you plan to do. Once you announce it, the 
   topic is yours.
d) Date for the presentation of your Class Project.
e) Last date for emailing me your "as presented" Class Project 
   Writeup (see below for more details).

3) "Explain a Concept": Pick a topic of relevance to the class that is not
too specialized and explain it
to everybody in a slide presentation.  You can choose to use a blackboard
if you want, but slides generally work better.  Please announce in the class
as soon as possible what your topic will be so that we don't get everybody 
explaining the same concept!

Here are some suggested topics: Hybrid car, CAFE standards, Energy Star program,
rising sea levels, species mass extinction, melting glaciers, Kyoto Protocol,
carbon tax, cap-and-trade, fuel cell, biofuels, corn ethanol, algae,
geothermal energy, PV solar, thermal solar, wind power, smart grid, NJ
clean energy program, cogeneration (combined heat and power), nuclear power,
sources of greenhouse gases, international breakdown of greenhouse gas
emissions, agricultural emissions, transportation modes....


4) The "as presented" writeups for the Class Project should go over
the contents of your slides as you went over them during the
presentation, any brief explanations if needed, answers to any
questions that might have come up during the presentation and
references.  No long writeups, please, and don't ask me how many
pages. Just email me your writeup and the (corrected) presentation
slides. No need to print anything. KEEP IT SHORT!


5) I am happy to help you every stage of the way in picking topics,
preparation, looking over your draft slides and giving you feedback
and so on.  Just send me an email. ("Does this topic sound ok?", "xxx
area interests me.  Can you suggest a topic?", "Can you look over this
outline?", "Is my logic and numbers on slide N correct?", "How do I
figure out the numbers for xxx?" "Can I modify my topic to xxx?")

6) There will be plenty of interruptions during your
presentations. Think of this class a team working together.  Stop your
friends from talking over your head and don't hesitate to argue or
take the devil's advocate position.  It will be a very dead class if
the speaker just drones on and on. I will do my part by inerrupting a
lot - to explain, argue or just to go on a long detour.

7) I MUST be informed sufficiently in advance by both parties if you
swap your presentation dates.

8) You can bring your own laptop for the presentation, or email the
powerpoint or pdf to me (keep the size small!) sufficiently before
your presentation date and use my laptop. You can also bring your
presentation on a flash memory stick, but be absolutely sure that
there are no viruses etc on it.  Do a virus check scan of the device,
please. If you bring your own laptop, be sure you know how to switch
display to the projector.  Also bring your power supply so that the
battery does not run out during the presentation.

9) MAC USERS:  
a) Please make sure that you bring any special connector cable etc 
needed to hook up your Mac to the projector.  
b) pdf files prepared on Mac don't always show up correctly on a Windows 
machine. Please make sure beforehand that they do.  Otherwise, you may end
up with half of your presentation not showing up. The best thing to do is
to bring your Mac with the special connector cable.