Tips for Preparing a Presentation (Do improvise!): Typically, 15-20 slides per paper. 2-4 slides on motivation and background, 5-7 slides on core ideas of the paper, 3-5 slides on experimental data. 2-4 slides on your thoughts/criticisms/questions/discussion points about the paper.
Use examples - the more and the earlier, the better. It improves clarity.
Use pictures - the more, the better. It improves clarity. Use animation, but not too much.
Write concrete bullet points that make sense and are to the point - don't be vague or general.
Remind the audience of definitions of basic terms before you use them in your presentation. Define before use.
It is ok to reuse figures from the original paper/presentation by the authors of a paper. It is NOT ok to reproduce entire slides or slide bullets - the presentation outline and execution should be original. Do feel free to reproduce ideas and questions (e.g., from the student reviews) though, as long as these are in your own words.
When presenting experimental plots, make sure you state what the experiment was exactly, and what the parameter values were (best if on the slide itself). An experimental plot is meaningless without a description of the experiment!
When presenting your questions/criticisms/discussion points, be as constructive as possible - respect the paper but also your own opinions.
Use text only where absolutely necessary - it puts folks to sleep and makes them ask more nasty questions.
Jump into the "core" of the paper as quickly as possible - within the first 3 slides is best.
Anticipate questions that you're likely to get - better still, prepare slides that have answers (or non-answers) to these questions.
If the paper being presented is not yours, try to do justice to the authors' contribution, but also make sure you state alongside what your personal/research opinion is about each of the authors' design decisions (this can pre-empt questions, esp. if the design decision is questionable).
Keep track of time, because it is the only thing guaranteed to increase monotonically.
Your presentation will be evaluated equally along three metrics: 1) Quality of Presentation, 2) Quality of Understanding of Paper, and 3) Discussion/Questions initiated by Presentation.
You can use either the computer in the classroom (put your presentation online before) or your own laptop.
Tips for Writing a Review (Do improvise!): 2 pages max (total). For each paper, 1 paragraph on the core idea of the paper, followed by list of pros and cons of the approach, your thoughts on how the paper can be further developed, and any questions/criticisms/thoughts/doubts/wanderings about the paper. Please take into account the time the paper was written (accepted) in your critique.
Please, DO NOT comment on the Grammar/typos in the paper. We are interested only in criticism of the material, problem, ideas, algorithm, approach, experiments, and methodology in the paper. Please constructively criticize the work.
It is ok to comment on experiments the authors ought to have done.