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Re: a personal plea regarding powerpoint presentations in Minneapolis



Keith,

Thanks!

could I ask you to send this pointer also to the edu-team and/or the edu-discuss list (both hosted @ietf.org?) - since the EDU team is collecting resources for helping IETF participants function better, this should be valuable input for them.

But ..... I'm worried about one point in particular:


 9.
Now delete all of your text slides, except perhaps for the ones that
included topics for discussion. If all of your slides were text
consisting of things you intended to say, delete the entire presentation
and start over. Just do it.

The purpose of typing in this text was to organize your thoughts in a
fashion that would make sense when presented linearly. However, you
probably do not want to project these on the screen (do you really want
your audience to be paying attention to what's on the screen and not to
what you are saying?), and you almost certainly do not want to recite
these verbatim to your audience (repetition which is so boring it's
almost guaranteed put them to sleep!).

If you really think the text is valuable, move it to the speaker notes.
Or save that file and start over with an empty one. At the very least,
hide all of those text slides so that they will not show up.

It's been claimed repeatedly, and from people with multiple linguistic backgrounds, that having text on the screen - ESPECIALLY if it summarizes well what is being said - is a Good Thing for those whose first language is not English. Just making "supporting pictures" can hinder comprehension - especially if the speaker is one of those whose natural delivery is quite rapid, or if the speaker is a non-native English speaker. (Most non-native English speakers find other language groups' variations of English harder to follow than "native English").


Just a thought to ponder..... and thanks for sharing!

Harald