omouse's blog

PowerPoint Lectures

Note: Linux.com hasn't posted this blog post yet, so I decided to put it here.

In the previous post [at linux.com] on business computing, I wrote that I didn't want a PowerPoint clone at all.

I've taken many courses where PowerPoint was used by professors and it was horrible. The amount of information on each slide is too low. It doesn't matter how much text there is, there will always be too little information on it. The worst was a database class I took at college. The instructor had all the important information on slides. It took more than 5 slides to say to what could have been said in a single paragraph. It's next to impossible to learn from slides like that. There's no room for examples, no room for comments, etc.

I think the reason PowerPoint is used by professors is because of the sales, marketing and business types that invaded university campuses. As someone said (can't remember who), PowerPoint is the tool of the salesperson.
It lets you instill a sort of tunnel-vision in your audience.

The best lectures have been given without the crutches of PowerPoint or overhead projectors, and many of them were written down and published in book form. I have a book of Noam Chomsky lectures on linguistics and there is a lot of information in it. I'm amazed that people sat through long lectures like that.

Avoid PowerPoint if you can. If you must have slides, only put headings or a few brief points on each slide. If you're going to distribute the slides afterwards, also try and have a speech or notes for your speech prepared. Basically, pretend you're giving a grand old lecture in a grand old lecture hall  or an intimate discussion in a small study in a historically significant university.

Linux.com, reading short stories

Ugh, yet another blog eh?

I'm writing some short posts related to GNU/Linux on the Linux.com blog.

My first three posts:

• Semantic Patching
• Hardware Problems
• Lots of focus on business computing

I found a few nice posts on there about OpenOffice and its features. I really think it's a solid competitor to Microsoft Office, at least for the basics though I did use Apple's Pages word processor for my last assignment (it was for a marketing class, I wanted it to look nice!)

The posts about OpenOffice:

• Create a database and data entry form in OpenOffice.org Base
• Lesser known but very helpful features in OpenOffice.org Writer

In other news, I spent some time reading a few short stories. I read Ursula LeGuin's Those Who Walk Away From Omelas and am making my way through Herman Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivner. The first was very interesting and nice to read while the other was slow to start.

Right now I'm writing down notes for the important part of a book review. It's centered on two particular chapters and it's so strange to notice the theme of a book. It's almost a history book but not quite and has its own bias but I think it would really open the eyes of people when it comes to technology.

I'm looking over a list of words that should be cut out or replaced and hope to make use of it for this review. The writing process is to take notes all over the place and then when I'm writing the draft of the review, to refer to it and paste and re-arrange whole paragraphs into the draft. Then I have a solid starting point and can add/delete where necessary.

Listening to My Bloody Valentine right now and they're great at that "wall of noise" effect. I should really listen to them more often. But after this next song I'll be switching to the Nine Inch Nails...

Oh, and the book I'm reviewing is Geeks Bearing Gifts.