It's funny - when I looked at our syllabus and saw that we were devoting class time to PowerPoint, I thought "isn't that kind of a waste of time?...everyone knows how to use PPT by now..." and then I had a flashback to some of the horrific powerpoints I gave this past semester and seriously re-thought my knee-jerk response. For example, those of you who were in my Histories/Theories/Philosophies class witnessed one of the worst PPTs ever created, and it was mine. What I did was basically cut and paste from the final paper I wrote about my school observations, added some images, and called it a powerpoint. While it was not a bad paper, my academic language and waaaaaaay too much text approach were ill-suited for a powerpoint.
I have - in fact - had so much training in how to write academically that I even find it hard to write on this blog in an un-academic style. I find myself going back and making my language more casual, nerdy and backwards as that seems...
I could not agree more with this quote from the Digital Literacy Toolkit website more: "While teachers and students have become familiar with the technical skills required to use images in multimedia productions, they lack a critical language to determine whether an image or a sound is used appropriately." In terms of a "web crit" for this site, I find it a little ironic that the site is so text-heavy and unexciting visually, but the set-up is very straightforward and in the "teaching" section, there are a lot of useful resources that I could learn from, as well as my future students.
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I'll be honest in that I debated devoting class time to powerpoint (although it might not be much since tomorrow is a pretty packed day). But for lots of folks, and especially teachers, this form of presentation isn't something they're used to. And it's definitely something you want in your toolkit for thesis! Hopefully I've got some useful tips for you tomorrow, katie!
ReplyDeletei have noticed that if i write in all lower case, it helps me loosen up in my own "academic voice" when writing. while this may not be fully appropriate at all times (i.e., some emails yes, others NO), i think blogs can handle it. that said, i really appreciated your inclusion of a quote from the website. nice form. ;)
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