Comments on: Slides and Chalkboards

By: Dance

Dance — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:10:00 +0000

I found this discussion of "sliduments" very applicable to classroom teaching, summing up a lot of what's been said here. I followed the link from this discussion of the Lessig style.

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:01:38 +0000

CMarko,
Not Caleb. I was thinking of Bruce the department chair. If you eat meat, have a green chili cheeseburger at Earl’s for me. Or a steak at the Ranch Kitchen. If you don’t eat meat, well, get used to the Oasis.

By: jim

jim — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:07:44 +0000

“[T]he absolutely key thing is to avoid speaking the slides literally.” Yes, yes, yes.

I, too, have students give presentations. Before they give them, though, I do a half-hour or so piece on presenting. Show some clips of TED talks, mostly people using slides well; talk to why these work; show Al Gore drying, turning to look at the slide, hoping that’ll remind him what he’s to say next; tell them they’re not Al Gore, they can’t get away with that; show a clip of Lessig telling the Jon Else story (when he says Fox Studios, a slide comes up, “Fox Studios”, when he says the Simpsons was only on for three and a half seconds, a slide comes up “3.5 seconds”, when he says Fox asked for $10,000, a slide comes up “$10,000”) then ask them what three things Lessig wants you to remember. I end with two slides. One says just “DON’T READ THEM” in as large a font as will fit and I tell them that if you start reading your slides, your audience will, too. They can read silently faster than you can enunciate, so they’ll get to the end quicker than you, and then they’ll switch off. The other is this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachgraham/239400248/

Look at him. Even his co-presenter looks bored.

There’s a very strong anti-pattern which looks at the slides as an aid to the presenter. If not his script, at least his notes. Don’t succumb. The slides are for the audience. They’re to provide emphasis to, to illustrate, to augment what the presenter is saying.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:08:32 +0000

Those are good guidelines, David. It seems to me that the absolutely key thing is to avoid speaking the slides literally. They’re best as definitions, key concepts, images: the kind of thing you’d stop your flow of lecturing to write on the chalkboard. They’re not the lecture itself.

By: CMarko

CMarko — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:04:17 +0000

I graduated from college last year, joined Teach for America, and got sent to New Mexico. I’m living and teaching on the Zuni pueblo, about 40 minutes south of Gallup, and I take education classes at the university. The class I mentioned was actually a class I took for fun, rather than one of my required courses; it was a New Mexico History class taught by a guy I know named Caleb. He doesn’t have a beard, and I don’t think he’s from Rehoboth.

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:18:45 +0000

One question, one statement, one aside. First, since when was Stanford (or any other big research uni) noted for the quality of its undergraduate teaching? Generally, good undergrad courses are the exception not the rule. Second, incorporating powerpoint effectively is tricky but there are a few guidelines that help. Put as little text on a slide as possible, minimize effects, work with visible colors (no red and blue together! They vibrate). A lot of this stuff is hard for us text based types who aren’t used to thinking visually. Find a friend who understands design and have them make a template for you if you are having trouble. Also, be sure your slides are readable from the back of the room. Finally, the aside: CMarko, what the heck are you doing in Gallup and taking courses there? Was the teacher guy with the beard who was born in Rehoboth? I’ve been working on a book on the Grants-Gallup area so I’d love to know why you are there.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Sat, 17 May 2008 12:21:36 +0000

I like that. I’ve thought about trying to get students to prepare Keynote/PP slides for presentations, just as a skills exercise, but also to raise an open question about what the best way to present information to others actually is.

By: Britta

Britta — Sat, 17 May 2008 06:00:24 +0000

Actually, one of the best classes I took at Swarthmore relied heavily on powerpoint, although in this case it was the students using it, not the professor. It was a biology class taught by a prof on material (for the most part) outside his field of training, so he ran it as more of a guided reading. Each week, two students were responsible for giving a presentation on that week’s reading as well as doing further outside research on the topic. The class was seminar style (3 hours once a week). The presentation was expected to be about an hour, and then the rest of the class involved student-led class discussion of the material. The class was limited to 12 students, was highly competitive to get into, and was a mid/upper level course. We were then graded on our presentation (both content/research, powerpoint presentation, speaking skills) and discussion leading skills. I’ve found that aside from learning the course material, gaining the ability to put together an interesting concise presentation has helped me well after college.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:18:10 +0000

I don’t see too many Blackberries out in the open during class time. It’s not that uncommon for cellphones to ring (mine has done so twice during the last year, so I’m hardly in a position to criticize) but students just turn them off. I’d say about a quarter of the students, at the most, have laptops open during class session. Of them, I’d say about half of those are using them for note-taking and useful googling of information; the other half, I suspect if I came around to where they were, they’d be emailing, IM’ing, etcetera.

This bothers a lot of faculty, but again, I think it’s a bit of a red herring. Where laptop use in classrooms is widely employed to distracting ends is probably in very large classrooms built around the droning lecture/PP slide presentation. At which point, why is the professor concerned with the level of intellectual engagement in the audience, given the pedagogy at hand? Moreover, students who are zoning out or disengaged in a smaller, more discussion-oriented class don’t need technology to do so.

By: nord

nord — Fri, 16 May 2008 02:31:08 +0000

Well Tim, I’d like to turn the tables … how common are crackberries in the classroom among the current crop of swarthmore students? when I was there, cell phones were rare – only the volunteer fire fighters carried beepers the size of books to get the 10 second head start before the alarm went off by the field house. Now with mobile data, students have a lot more ways to be “easily distracted” … add lap tops and students can probably google a coherent argument about any random author they may not have read/understood completely…