"Kenneth M. Steele" wrote:
> ...But I have chosen not to use PowerPoint because of the negative
> comments about PP-lectures from several students. The chief
> complaints I have heard center around the use of slides that
> consist of 1-level bulleted lists, with some irrelevant graphic
> embroidery. The similarity of these slides within and across
> classes makes it difficult to attend to content information
> according to my informants.
I went to a technology in teaching conference one time and was disappointed to
find that they presented material to us with PowerPoint (or something similar)
using a slide template, the same color and format of bullet points all the way
through. I went to sleep.
I have all of my lectures on PowerPoint. However, I went to a lot of trouble to
collect backgrounds and graphics and sounds. (Unlike the recommendations you
will find for business users of PowerPoint) I never use slide templates. I make
my own background/font/graphics combinations, and I change them each time I
change a topic. By topic, I mean 5-10 changes in a 50 minute class. It takes a
*lot* longer, but it provides another cue that helps to add structure and
variation to the process. I try to make the graphics as relevant as possible,
but an occasional irrelevant one (like Richard Nixon) will sometimes stand out.
I also get some laughs (and attention) from sounds that are not related, but I
change them on almost every slide, at least with every topic change. It sounds
annoying, but it works for me. I have a big collection of South Park, Loony
Toons, musical instrument, guns... all kinds of sounds, most of which I got from
the Internet.
> A second difference I have observed as a member of an audience
> in a PP presentation is that it is often difficult for some
> presenters to alter the sequence of presentation in response to
> questions or comments. In those circumstances, this lack of
> flexibility makes the technique inferior to overheads.
I ramble less with PowerPoint, but if you know what you are looking for you can
easily 'right-click' and select any slide (by title or graphic) to go to next. I
would think that it would be no different than overheads, maybe better.
I tried making an outline on the first slide and making each item of the outline
a hyperlink to the sequence of slides of that topic. You can put in a return
link and jump back to the outline at the end of each topic showing where you are
in the structure (the used links turn color like in a browser) but I decided that
it was more trouble than it was worth. That concept did, however, make a pretty
decent Jeopardy game, which gets a lot of positive comments from the students.
We have remote mice, which allows unrestrained pacing. I generally like using
PowerPoint and my students seem to like it, also.
--
__ Rick Stevens
__ Psychology Department
__ University of Louisiana at Monroe
__ http://www.ulm.edu/~stevens
