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While many colleges, even in these tough economic times, are spending small fortunes outfitting their classrooms with the latest technology, The Chronicle is reporting that the dean of the Meadow School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University is actually taking computers out of the classroom. According to Dean Bowen, classrooms equipped with computers and internet access encourage, among other things, bad lectures. Bowen’s biggest complaint, not surprisingly is the use of PowerPoint lectures, which according to several polls, seem to be causing an epidemic of student boredom. Like so many Baruch BPL students, who have bored their fair share of Communication Fellows with meandering and pointless PowerPoint presentations, it seems teachers at Southern Methodist have a difficult time understanding how to use PowerPoint effectively to convey information visually. Although the article is more thorough, in the video above Bowen makes a good argument for why he took the computers out of the classroom, and he makes an especially good argument about the value and importance of interactive classroom discussions. But Bowen is no Luddite nor is he a neophyte when it comes to using technology in the classroom, and in many ways, this is where I part ways with Dean Bowen, who has reportedly used video games to teach his students about the history of Jazz and encourages his professors to put their lectures on podcasts so that students and professors can spend more time exploring lecture ideas in the classroom. What matters most about this argument, though, is that whether you use technology in the classroom or not, it is the ratio of student to teacher interaction that matters most. Perhaps there is a place for podcasts and classroom blogs (I would personally draw the line at video games) but these technologies should not become a substitute for student/teacher interaction.

Below is Lawrence Lessig’s keynote at last week’s Educause 2009: “It’s About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright.”  This 60 minute presentation is well worth the time of anyone who’s interested how antiquated copyright laws are impacting ecologies of freedom, access, education, and science in the digital age.  After delineating how we got to where we are, he advocates that rather than reforming existing laws, we instead challenge them by building alternative structures that will more flexibly, appropriately, and ethically govern information use.  Technologists and educators have specific and crucial roles in this: technologists must “build the code” for sanity by making it easier for others to effectively play by new rules, and educators must perform and encourage in our students skepticism towards rules that simply no longer make sense.

Also: as always, Lessig provides a captivating model for integrating text, images, and art into a presentation.

The Ted Commandments (click to see larger version of the image)

I wish I had this for my students earlier this semester!  These Ten Commandments of public speaking are written on actual stone tablets.   TED records their speakers and anyone can download the talks from their website here.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

I love this quirky little how-to clip, mostly because the audio doesn’t match up to the video, making poor Leila look like she needs her own mandated visit to the house of corrections. But I can relate to Leila and her message, and I’m willing to admit that I stumbled upon this video in a moment of desperation, when I was brainstorming different approaches to this question of encouraging solid eye contact in oral communicating.

As most of us have probably discovered by now, when we’re providing feedback on speeches, merely repeating “you need to make more eye contact” doesn’t do the trick. (And really, why should it?) Most of the speakers we work with know full well that eye contact is something they should shoot for—they’ve seen this on speech evaluation forms and read about it dutifully in their Intro to Public Speaking class way back when. But if they commit this same “offense” in every presentation they make—staring at the PP screen, or at the floor, or at their hands, or note cards—when does the practice actually come in?

And, just as importantly, how do we invigorate our own approach to this thorny delivery snag? Some days, “make more eye contact” becomes the easy go-to, that dull phrase you know you’ll probably say before the student even begins. But isn’t commenting on eye contact just another way of saying that they didn’t make a connection with their audience? If we wanted to get all Eckhart Tolle on this post, we could extend it into the idea of being fully present (which has plenty of resonances in actor training). We all know how magical it can be when someone gives really great eye—that mixture of confidence, care, and connection– but how is it best learned?

I’ve tried a few new things in my recent quest to investigate the power of the Connecting Eyes. In the classroom, I’ve become more emboldened to push away the chairs and try out some of the better eye contact exercises that I know of, forcing people to get used to going eyeball-to-eyeball. Some of these exercises transform the room into a sort of communications gym class, which is a little hard to get used to, but not a bad thing at all. Does this have more successful outcomes in student performance? Hard to tell, exactly. But it certainly increases comfort and community among the students.

And during my BPL sessions with student groups, I’ve changed my approach. Instead of allowing the students to run through their entire presentations before I provide my feedback, I now occasionally stop them mid-stream, prompting them to re-do an entire section, this time focusing on, say, sustained eye contact. I know some of you out there have run your practice sessions like this for quite a while, but I’m just now catching on to its real benefits. I had been skeptical of the logic of isolating one element and potentially distracting the speaker with it, but I’m now thinking of these sessions as true rehearsals; if they can’t “run through” their work multiple times, what are the chances that a pattern of poor delivery will be broken?

We (Hillary and Melis) were new to BPL 5100 during the Fall 2008 semester, and both felt that there was a lot to process once it had ended. After a semester of working with BPL student groups to prepare them for their capstone presentations, we wanted to find a way to use the blog to share our experiences. We came up with the idea of recording a videochat, thinking that it would be an experiment in having a public dialogue that would hopefully invite others to join the post-semester wrap-up.

We chose to focus on the theme of the ‘audience’ because we thought this was an important aspect of how students prepare for their presentations, and because it’s also the topic of the Spring symposium. We discussed the different ideas of the ‘audience’ that we found while rehearsing BPL presentations, as well as different aspects of what audience means for us as Communication Fellows, for our students, professors, and in the business environment.

Video chat is something we had often used for personal purposes but its usefulness for sharing ideas and communicating in the work environment is something we hadn’t fully explored. We’re including a short clip from our chat below, which will give you a glimpse into our conversation. We are looking for your comments and hope that this will help to generate new ideas about the role of the audience in student oral presentations as well as the potential use of video chat in increasing communication.

* Update January 19: A response from Agnieska:

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
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.

What would it look like if Honest Abe had PowerPoint at his disposal on that fateful day in 1863?

Quite possibly, this.

Its creator, Peter Norvig, also describes his rationale here, and considers the value of PowerPoint in “PowerPoint: Shot with its own bullets,” which was published in The Lancet.

We don’t need to throw the baby out with the bullet-pointed bathwater, but the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation might prove useful for those discussing with students (or colleagues) what makes for good (and bad) PowerPoint.

I’ve been thinking about David’s post a while back discussing strategies for effective PowerPointing. In writing instruction, one of the best ways to get students to begin writing with confidence is to have them “write what they know.” What they know is less important than that they develop the ability to explore and express it. Such an assignment implicitly takes some of the focus off of the content, and moves it onto the form. Though those two elements of writing are never completely separable, it’s often helpful to have assignments that focus on one more than the other.

I’m not sure that students are ever given much of an opportunity to learn to present or to PowerPoint in this way, to “PowerPoint what they know.” Would this be helpful as a freshman year assignment in some type of intro course? (I’m of the mind, by the way, that all freshmen should be taking a required media literacy course in their freshmen years… this would fit perfectly in that class).

I once worked with a freshmen class that used PowerPoint to create documentaries about their families, with embedded movies, audio interviews, and images. The goal of the assignment was to get students to break out of the PowerPoint box, and to get them to construct a narrative through the medium. The only rules were no clip art and no gratuitous animation. I gave them a workshop on PowerPoint, helped them storyboard their presentations, and then assisted them with the programming. Finally, they showed their work to the class. This assignment was a successful way for them to master the software and develop their voices at the same time, with the added bonus of creating community in the classroom through the sharing of personal information.

All of what I’ve written above is just prelude to the PowerPoint slides included below, which are examples of the more serious work that some Baruch students might produce if we give them the chance to PowerPoint what they know. Click on the image to read it.

(Slides taken from here, with a warning that readers not of the hip-hop nation may be offended).

I know PowerPoint is not the most popular kid on the block these days.  Without sounding too much like a conservative talking about gun control, I have to confess that I’m a firm believer that PowerPoint itself is not inherently evil, but people tend to use it in primarily evil ways.  While attending the workshop on Technology and Media at Friday’s CUNY Writing Fellows meeting, it was clear that has the potential to engage students in the classroom using visual media.  However, most of us are still struggling to come up with creative ways of using it which do not impose an artificially linear structure to classroom discussions and stifle students’ ability and willingness to communicate their ideas and think critically about the material.

Although I am still one of those people who are constantly trying to come up with better uses of PowerPoint in the classroom, I thought I would share one way I’ve used PowerPoint in class that tends to promote engagement, discussion, and debate among students without feeling imposing.  It’s also fun!

This is Jeopardy!  That’s right, the popular game show format (along with many others) has been creatively employed in PowerPoint presentations using slide links and transitions.  There are several templates available online (just Google “PowerPoint Jeopardy”).  Ethics Jeopardy is one version I’ve created and used several times in a graduate level seminar on research ethics (although I’ve also used it in undergrad classes in social psychology and statistics).  I usually start by splitting the class into two or three teams.  One team picks first and gets to respond to whatever question (answer) they pick.  If that team does not provide an adequate response, the other team can steal the points away.  I usually give the teams a few minutes to talk amongst themselves before they respond.  Once we’re done discussing the first item, the next team gets to pick a category.  As you can see, the items do not have right or wrong answers, and are constructed to promote discussion, debate, and critical engagement with the material.  PowerPoint allows for audio and visual clues to be included, and this is especially fun to do with Daily Doubles.  My favorite is the Debate Daily Double, which requires the teams to take contrasting positions on an issue and spend some time going back and forth on a critical issue.  Final Jeopardy can also be used as great prompt for some low-stakes, in-class writing activities.    Generally, the game show format, although it seems quite corny, creates a low-stakes atmosphere and I often find students who do not normally participate taking more active roles in the discussion.  It’s also great for exam review.

In my opinion, this is just one way in which PowerPoint and other presentation software packages can be employed in useful, engaging, creative, and fun ways.  I definitely agree that PowerPoint is dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands, but I’m not ready to give up on it as a potentially useful teaching tool.  I’d love to hear others’ thoughts and examples of creative uses of PowerPoint in the classroom.

For those of us down on PowerPoint, here are a couple of comedians using PowerPoint in their acts. As you can imagine, hilarity ensues.

First, Don McMillan, the poor man’s Edward Tufte, on how not to use Powerpoint. Then, Tim Lee, Ph.D. uses PowerPoint slides and some old fashioned booklearning, to keep his audience in stitches. Enjoy.