To turn my paper into a TED Talk, I plan on cutting a few things. First, I’m going to eliminate a lot of the information explaining what a concussion is from a medical standpoint. Knowing what a concussion is is important to my paper, but it’s not necessarily important to understand the science and biology behind a concussion. This will be cut down to just the basic definition of a concussion and maybe a detail or two about symptoms. I’m assuming most people have heard of or even have experienced a concussion. Another part I think doesn’t need to be in the TED Talk is all the examples of players I used in my paper, or at least every detail I put in about their concussion story. I don’t think it’s important to give explicit information about every player I mention in the essay, but I do think I’ll need at least one good example. I’m going to limit the amount of detail I have before the paradigm shift because I feel the essay is heavier on that side and I want the video to be more balanced. I think I can lower this detail and still have enough to prove that a paradigm shift has occurred. I’m thinking about going more in depth into Heads Up Football to show how the NFL is working to make football safer from the midget level the whole way up to the pros. Some crucial information that I will be leaving in the video is how the NFL misbehaved, such as by forcing a player knocked unconscious to continue playing. There are other details that display the failures of the NFL which are important to leave in because they clearly show that a paradigm shift has occurred because this would never happen today.
I really like all of your intentions to make your essay a TED talk. I think that slimming down on some of the detail will allow you to focus on the overall impacts of the issue. And like you said, include crucial stepping stones along the way. I guess my one suggestion is to find some overarching theme to contextualize the entire shift and prove it with each of your examples.
TJ, first of all I don’t know it were suppose to be proving the paradigm shift in our TED talk. I figured it was just a discussion on a topic in our essay. I’m not positive, though, so this is a good question to ask Professor Brooks. When you said you were taking out a lot of technical jargon, I agree. That will likely bore the audience and the point of a TED talk is to engage the audience completely in a short period of time. However, I think if you could explain the detrimental effects of a concussion (very dramatically) in the intro of your talk, you’ll be able to frame it really well. That way your audience is engaged in the beginning using pathos. Then following this I think a general discussion on sports safety with maybe one example will definitely be an engaging talk.