Just a bit of fun...

Of all the PowerPoint slides I've ever made, I think this one may be my favourite:

It's really quite a simple one too: repeated freeform motion path animations with the smoothing turned off. Right click and save-as to download a version of it (1.7M).

Dance lessons

I am typing this while watching Strictly...It Takes Two, because that's the kind of crazy, risk-taking chancer I am. If this post gets infected with talk of Argentinian tangoes, I apologize in advance.

PowerPoint projection put to good use

Last week was the first week of term for the students here, and I spent much of it delivering library induction sessions for the new intake. Monday saw the first time since graduation that I gave a solo presentation to students, but thanks to some canny choreography by my fab-u-lous colleagues the monumental nature of this event was less than it might've been: in previous weeks I had done a couple of library tours,  helped out in one session, and delivered part of another (a part of equal size to that which I would be delivering on my own in the Monday session), thereby lulling me gently into the swing of it all.

I'm covering for somebody who is off sick, so the first part of my preparation for these sessions was to find her PowerPoint slides from last year -- not so straightforward when the person who made them isn't there to show you where she filed them, and when you yourself are completely new to an organization and its conventions. Once found, the slides needed reformatting according to glitzy new style-guides (each one requiring a thousand pink sequins), and the content had to be updated in light of at least severrrn policy and platform changes that came in over the summer. All this allowed me considerable opportunity to rework things to suit my own particular style.

What if all the students have table-tennis bats with numbers printed on?

The first session would be for the Women's Studies students, and my impression was that it would be a rather informal affair. At one point in the preceding week I awoke in the middle of the night (imagine James Stewart in Vertigo) and thought to myself "what if it's so informal that there's no projector?" (an indication of the sort of paranoia that keeps me on my toes). So it was that I prepared an alternate routine: I made several good lines of notes of the things I needed to say so as not to be reliant on the slides, and took with me some induction brochures to hand out. Both these moves would prove to be good, sensible things to do, whether there was a projector or not. As it happened, my paranoia proved sound: this would be a PowerPoint-free induction session, and the small group permitted the flexible conversational informality of the library tours I had done previously. 

Now, longstanding readers of this blog will be aware that I am no great lover of PowerPoint anyway. Indeed, I am rather dismissive of it. But when you're starting out in a new job, it's a very handy crutch. It's also much easier to steal and tweak somebody else's slides than it is to make sense of and rework somebody else's lesson plan. In this regard, I've found PowerPoint a very useful framework upon which to build. But as an aid to learning, I'm still not convinced it's anything more than a bit of fancy: a distracting rectangle of light in which to capture attention (and in the scale of distractions it falls closer to someone running around in circles with a cape than it does to Kristina Rihanoff). In all my subsequent inductions I was able to employ my slides, and they seem to have worked ok, but they did feel a little surplus to requirements at times: in a small group it feels ridiculous to be using them, and in a large one the subtleties of a demonstration are invisible to viewers at the back of the room (much as subtle footwork may be invisible to a TV audience). I began to wonder if it really mattered what was showing on the screen behind me.

This was tested when I accidentally used the wrong set of slides for a session (postgrad slides for an undergrad group). The difference between the two sets was incredibly slight (part of the problem!) and I was able to avert disarster quite easily by being light on my feet and filling in with the appropriate patter as necessary. Good to get these things out of the way in the first week!

What if my music-hall doll-dancing routine lets everybody down?

My first session with the PowerPoint took place in a room where I used to be taught as an undergrad. It felt kind of weird setting up the projector and leading a class there but it was a small room and a friendly audience, and things seemed to go ok. I was more nervous about a longer session with a half-hour practical attached, but in the end it waltzed along nicely (though I definitely need to work on my 'getting everybody's attention again' technique!). As the week went on, my confidence got a lift, and I think by the end of it I'd become pretty adept at outlining the library service. I've been on something of a roll, and I've just finished the slides for my first bit of real teaching: a two hour session on literature searching (one hour of me talking and one hour of the students going through a workbook I've prepared, assuming my calculations go to plan). Again it's a reworking of somebody else's slides, but this time even more liberally so (cue dancing cats and dogs to illustrate Boolean). I might even get to do a bit of whiteboarding if I can find a suitable pen! I'm looking forward to it, in a funny sort of way, safe in the knowledge that I can fall back on the workbook if I miss my footing and things start to go a bit pear-shaped. Whatever happens in this session, I can build on it, and use the experience to inform my other lit-searching classes in the coming weeks.

What if I'm partnered with Anton?

Keeeeeeeeep teaching!

CPD23:17 the_lost_art_of_lecturing.ppt

Action Points for this post: • Blackbored • 2x2" Slide Show Spectacular • The Fuzzy Logic of OHP • Whitebored   • PowerPoint Purgatory   • Prezi Précis • The AJP Method

Blackbored: • Blackboards are so 1820s • My handwriting has    yet to be deciphered • Dust and squeaks • Repetition of effort for    each class

2x2" Slide Show: • Slides are so 1970s • Technically difficult to produce • Require specialist equipment • This sort of thing happens

OHP: • Transparencies are so '60s • Soft focus, low light & filth • Difficult to handle (static;    inversion; sheets falling    off projector)

Whitebored: • Whiteboards are so 1990s • Glare • Ink everywhere • My handwriting... • More expensive and less   dynamic than blackboards

The Tyranny of PowerPoint: • Is to slides what    whiteboards are to    blackboards  • Naff clip-art !!! • Bullet-pointed hell

Prezi précis: (In collaboration with CPD23) Because animated clip-art wasn't quite annoying enough... ZOOOOOM!

The AJP Method: Because if what you're saying is worth saying, it shouldn't require any flashy gimmicks...