Thing 17 has been postponed, but in the meantime, I've had a bit of a think about slideshows. Not the slideshows that my parents sometimes put on, of their life in the 1970s (lots of miniskirts and beige), but the "presentation" that inevitably forms part of a talk or lecture. PowerPoint seems to have become rather too ubiquitous, partly, I suspect, because it moves attention away from the speaker, partly because speakers seem to believe that delivering a talk, lecture or teaching session must involve some kind of visual element, a backup of what the speaker is saying.
When I was an undergraduate, computers in classrooms weren't really the norm. Any visual information came courtesy of an overhead projector and the accompanying transparencies. Cue the probability of a lecturer putting an OHT upside down or back to front, or having to fiddle with the projector to focus or enlarge the image on the screen. Now we have interactive whiteboards: you can press instead of click. I find it a bit weird and do prefer to use the computer to control the presentation rather than the board, but maybe it's inexperience.
I presented a learning session for library staff on Twitter (basic uses and application) and wrote a presentation in PowerPoint. Mainly this was a safety net in case we lost our internet connection (it's also useful for distribution to anyone who can't make the session). It also helped me to plan the session, although in the end I didn't use much of it, and found myself improvising instead. If you know your subject you can get away with improvising, but it's nice to have the backup of planned notes. The dangers with slideshow presentations are putting too much information on each slide; having too many slides; making each slide look the same; not being interesting; causing death by PowerPoint (not sure whether this is a medically recorded cause of death yet, but it's possible).
Maybe we should go back to the days where all you had was your memory and a few sheets of A4 paper with notes on. I remember my English Professor walking into a lecture theatre with just a copy of Henry V and proceeding to talk for an hour on the text with no notes. He didn't even look at the play, just waved it around every now and then. The Master at work.
Prezi and Slideshare I have heard of, and I've viewed presentations in these formats, but as I have access to the perennial PowerPoint, I've never really looked at them in any detail. I use PowerPoint because I'm familiar with the program and have access to the software. I think SlideShare could be useful if you want to host the presentation on the web and make it public, but the ads are a bit annoying. I'd be interested to know if these programs are easier to use than PowerPoint, which I do find a bit clunky at times.
Anyway, I'll post more when we're told what to do with Thing 17.
When I was an undergraduate, computers in classrooms weren't really the norm. Any visual information came courtesy of an overhead projector and the accompanying transparencies. Cue the probability of a lecturer putting an OHT upside down or back to front, or having to fiddle with the projector to focus or enlarge the image on the screen. Now we have interactive whiteboards: you can press instead of click. I find it a bit weird and do prefer to use the computer to control the presentation rather than the board, but maybe it's inexperience.
I presented a learning session for library staff on Twitter (basic uses and application) and wrote a presentation in PowerPoint. Mainly this was a safety net in case we lost our internet connection (it's also useful for distribution to anyone who can't make the session). It also helped me to plan the session, although in the end I didn't use much of it, and found myself improvising instead. If you know your subject you can get away with improvising, but it's nice to have the backup of planned notes. The dangers with slideshow presentations are putting too much information on each slide; having too many slides; making each slide look the same; not being interesting; causing death by PowerPoint (not sure whether this is a medically recorded cause of death yet, but it's possible).
Maybe we should go back to the days where all you had was your memory and a few sheets of A4 paper with notes on. I remember my English Professor walking into a lecture theatre with just a copy of Henry V and proceeding to talk for an hour on the text with no notes. He didn't even look at the play, just waved it around every now and then. The Master at work.
Prezi and Slideshare I have heard of, and I've viewed presentations in these formats, but as I have access to the perennial PowerPoint, I've never really looked at them in any detail. I use PowerPoint because I'm familiar with the program and have access to the software. I think SlideShare could be useful if you want to host the presentation on the web and make it public, but the ads are a bit annoying. I'd be interested to know if these programs are easier to use than PowerPoint, which I do find a bit clunky at times.
Anyway, I'll post more when we're told what to do with Thing 17.
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