Soil Survey Online

Please research a US-based  soil survey  online. You may choose a town or county or other area you are familiar with or any other you have an interest in. In a 20-25 slide PowerPoint style presentation, summarize the important points of the soil survey, integrating course vocabulary (e.g. cation exchange capacity, soil polarity) and important course topics (e.g. the five factors of soil formation, soil horizons) into your project. You can’t include them all, but make sure you present some of the scientific content of the soil survey. Part of your challenge is figuring out what to present, and what not to present and how to summarize and synthesize information. If you do not have PowerPoint, there is a great “share-ware” program called OpenOffice with a program called Impress that is like PowerPoint. You can download it for free here: http://www.openoffice.org/. 

Somewhere in your project introduce the reader to your area of interest by presenting current demographic, economic, and land use data as well an any information (geological, climatic or historical) that might influence the soil composition of the area. Be sure to have a summary slide highlighting the most important points. In addition, postulate the future impacts to soils in that area, the agricultural usefulness of area soils, or other ideas that you find compelling. 

It is always a nice idea to include  professional images  in such a presentation for visual appeal, but remember to ALWAYS give proper credit where credit is due for other’s work (be it images or words). Images can be cited in the same way as text using standard APA citation style. Be sure to properly cite the sources used in preparing the presentation throughout and then provide details in a final Literature Cited slide. Use appropriate citations throughout the presentation for each fact or figure shown. You can find a web link to APA citation style on the course syllabus. 

There is a sample  student  created presentation in our lessons section, but be sure to just use it for inspiration rather than use it as a template. It is excellent, but it isn’t perfect so keep all that in mind when looking at it. For example, there are way too many slides that consist of huge blocks of text in the sample. In general, when doing  PowerPoint  you want to use bulleted or numbered lists and a good general  rule of thumb  is 5 bullets/numbers per slide and 5 words on each of those bullets/numbers. This is just an example, but you get my point. I have also included a tips file in the Lessons area. 

You will be graded as follows:
10 pts – sufficient length & depth (approx 20-25 slides as a guide)
30 pts – integrated vocabulary
10 pts – area introduction (important information presented)
10 pts – future impact
20 pts – APA Citations (throughout the presentation and last slide lists all sources – do not forget to source images)
10 pts – grammar/spelling
10 pts –  presentation design