Re: a personal plea regarding powerpoint presentations in Minneapolis

[Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>]

> 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.

will do.
 
> 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").

That's an interesting point, and one I'm not really qualified to
evaluate.  But as much as I think it important to accomodate non-native
English speakers (and especially to get their input), I have to wonder which
is more important - to facilitate discussion among those who have the
background and the language skills (realizing that this can exclude
valuable input), or to make one-way presentations which everyone can follow? 
I'm not sure we can have it both ways.  

Though it might be that making that material available in another form - say 
as PDF files that can be printed out prior to the meeting - would give both
native and non-native speakers a chance to assimilate the nature of the
discussion, and allow them to prepare questions or other input to be brought
to the meeting.

Keith