In support of Paul's e-mail I merely repeat what I said the last time this discussion raised the temperature on a list- good teaching is still not common- more common is abuse of students' time and effort in turning up to lectures as they are subjected to dull and not terribly educational dronings from the front. When any person tells me that putting their presentations on the web means that students might not go to the lectures I think to myself- 'what are you doing so badly wrong that they would rather try to interpret the powerpoint slides than interact with you?' PowerPoint is an illustrative tool- I never read what I have on my slides, but use them for summative statements and the odd statistic. When used this way, PowerPoint is a wonderful tool indeed- rather more fun for the students than a blackboard/whiteboard, and easier to update on a year to year basis. Show me a bad PowerPoint user and I'll show you a bad teacher- nothing to do with IT skills either, as a good teacher wouldn't use a tool with which they were not fully comfortable.
Can I ask why PowerPoint excites more discussion on ICT mail lists than say ICT and widening participation or e-learning strategy? Or am I being unspeakably dull? Must get back to my PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow- I doubt the feedback will be that the slides were great but the speaker was rubbish- if I am rubbish my slides will be too! And if the speaker is good...will they care about the slides? Not a jot.
Kathy
PS last time I wrote this Chris O'Hagan flamed me big time- please don't do it again Chris!!! ;-)
Kathy Wiles [log in to unmask]
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-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Gunnion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 28 January 2003 14:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Ban Powerpoint?
When Ian Winship's message in this thread first appeared I forwarded
it to a colleague, Geoff, and my son-in-law, Derek, with the heading
"Death by PowerPoint", which was the warning Derek offered me when I
took on Geoff's set of 55 slides to illustrate a day-long session on
communications for a certificate-level class in personnel practice.
As others have pointed out, you don't need to use every slide. Geoff
doesn't, and I found I didn't need to either. Having all of them
enables quick resumes of what has been done in previous sessions and
allows students, later, to structure their own notes around
illustrations and quotations.
Even when using OHP slides - with far too many words on them and
often all in capitals - I've known otherwise good speakers read out
every word.
Any slide (PP or OHP) should be something to be developed as deliver
our talk or lecture.
Last week, here in Strathclyde University, Robert Winston, fertitlity
expert, gave a lecture in reply to the question "Does science have a
moral dimension?"
He must have had 30 plus slides in his PP set. As his lecture
developed he used perhaps ten of them, and we indulged him with
patient silence as he searched for the last one (a drawing by Pieter
Breughel, the elder) to make his very effective conclusion to his
argument that science, as knowledge, can have no moral dimension.
Good teachers, and speakers, can make good use of any tools, or use
none. Poor or lazy teachers and speakers will misuse any tool.
The medium is not the message.
Just under thirty years ago, at the Open University, John Naughton,
proud possessor of one of the first personal computers, as we called
them back then, argued in a lunchtime discussion in the main theatre,
that the book was dead.
As the FOC (shop steward) of the National Union of Journalists with
50 members at the OU, I countered John's claim by stating that until
I could read a computer in my bath, my bed or on the bus, the book
was still a very effective and efficient means for delivering
information, knowledge and entertainment.
That "comfort coefficient" of the computer is almost here, after
nearly thirty years, but the death of the book, as I sure John would
agree, is greatly exaggerated.
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