Re: a personal plea regarding powerpoint presentations in Minneapolis

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com>]

In message <20031029212423.0cc81a14.moore@cs.utk.edu>, Keith Moore writes:
>> 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.
>

I think Harald is right -- I've seen various Japanese attendees taking 
pictures of the slides to help them.  

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb