PowerPoint in Literature Classes?

October 24, 2008 By 3 Comments

It was a pleasure attending last Wednesday’s staff meeting. In addition to the usual yummy sandwiches and cookies, I was particularly impressed by Tom’s VOCAT demonstration and our discussion on whether the use of Micro PowerPoint and technology in general opens up new possibilities or sets the limits of our analytical thinking skills. It is probably not an either-or question. Since Kate, Luke, David, Mikhail, Deborah, and Anthony have already elaborated on this topic through their recent postings, it won’t be necessary to reiterate the points they already made. There seems to be a general consensus that “PP” is a kind of necessary evil that should be handled by skilled hands until a better tool is invented. I agree that PowerPoint and other animated presentation software have an advantage especially in a global setting since image and non-verbal means of communication oftentimes enable us to overcome language and cultural barriers.

From http://www.blakearchive.org

From http://www.blakearchive.org
Click to enlarge.

I wonder, however, whether people have used PowerPoint or other multimedia presentation tools in English literature classes. I remember once in my Romanticism class the professor presented Blake’s illuminated poems in slides for us to read, which for me was quite a different way of “experiencing” poetry. It may sound counter-intuitive, but poetry might be the literary genre whose reading experience can be enhanced by certain visual aids due to the pictorial aspect of poetic language, which was illustrated by Horace’s phrase ut pictura poesis (“as is painting so is poetry”) or Derrida’s emphasis on the spatial dimension of writing. Do those in literature or humanities have any stories to share or any tips to offer regarding the use of multimedia resources in class other than film screening? Another question in my mind is, if creating bullet points and inserting animated graphs and charts for a PowerPoint presentation indeed can be considered a genre of writing, how do we incorporate it into the existing composition curriculum? I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Filed Under: Powerpoint and Presentations

Deep Attention and Hyper Attention

October 2, 2008 By 3 Comments

Reading David’s posting on online reading and watching the McLuhan interview clip led me to ask myself a series of questions. What will our future students in classroom be like? Will they be significantly different from what we have now? What comes next after the X, Y, and Z generations? If the average attention span of “TV audience” is 4-5 minutes, what is the number for the Internet generation?

In light of the media’s role in the ongoing generational shift, I found N. Katherine Hayles’s article “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes” in the 2007 Profession very interesting. According to her essay, so-called “Generation M” (M stands for media, I assume), an age group ranging from 8 to 18 years old, spends average 6.5 hours everyday consuming media that are divided into 3.51 hours’ watching TV and DVD movies, 1.44 hrs’ listening MP3, music CDs, and radio, 1.02 hrs of Web surfing, 0.49 hrs’ playing video games, and 0.43 hrs of reading. I don’t think the statistics stands for the whole young generation, but it can still be something to be concerned about. What Hayles has observed in this research is that we are moving away from a generation of “deep attention”, the ability to concentrate on a single subject for long periods, toward a generation of “hyper attention”, the tendency to prefer multitasking and high levels of stimulation.

Yet, this simple distinction between deep and hyper attention is not what I found the most interesting. What is more intriguing is that the activities that Generation M are involved in using new media tools, for example, playing computer games, in fact, require a combination of deep and hyper attention skills. Hayles juxtaposes the experience of reading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! with playing the popular computer game Riven in the sense that both activities oblige students to have the ability to develop deep and hyper attention: for instance, sorting out useful information or remembering key clues in order to solve the multiple puzzles embedded in each text. She also offers a few suggestions about how to bring the digital media technologies into classroom, for example, reading difficult books alongside with online interactive stories that students are familiar with.

Hayles’s article makes me think about many possible ways that we as educators cope with challenges in today’s classroom, but there is one thing that troubles me. After all, it is quite expensive to have students and classrooms equipped with TV sets, computers and laptops, overhead projectors, and other media gadgets. So, unfortunately, the argument of incorporating technologies into classroom can go as far as the developed nations are concerned.

Filed Under: Pedagogy
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