scratchpad jr. (2nd import)

Steven wants us to keep talking about PowerPoint and its value or lack-of-value as a presentation tool. I read his post while polishing off a PowerPoint presentation for a journalism class.

For some audiences, it’s totally expected that a presenter will use PowerPoint and have handouts, etc. Using PowerPoint for presentations was just as much a part of my library schooling as was learning HTML. One professor in particular required that all of our presentations were made with PowerPoint. Of course, PowerPoint was relatively new back then, so it was a still bright, shiny, impressive, innovative software. One of the items on my overcrowded to do list is to learn more about some of the PowerPoint alternatives.

If I’m making a relatively short (about fifteen minutes or shorter) presentation that doesn’t require any visual help, I can probably do it ok without PowerPoint and often choose to.

For me, though, there’s nothing more boring sometimes than trying to pay attention to a presenter who uses nothing visual and just drones on and on. I cringed when I read the advice that moderators not let panelists use PowerPoint. If a talk has lots of solid points, highlights appearing on a screen can really help the audience follow along and reinforce what the speaker is saying. It can also help wandering minds get back on track. And, likewise, having an outline keeps me on track when I’m speaking and helps me remember information I should cover. If I’m going to go through the effort of writing an outline, I may as well share it with the audience.

Personally, I think visual elements of a presentation are important to have, if possible. Whether PowerPoint is an appropriate tool or not, I think, is a reasonable debate.

Hello, Adam. I’m j. I’m a software, well, information technology innovator and a librarian. If you don’t believe that, perhaps some of my friends can vouch for me. If your RSS dinner meshes with my crowded schedule, perhaps I can prove to you in person that some librarians do cool things with technology.

Y’all, let’s keep Steven’s thread going. If you’re a librarian and you do cool things with technology, chime in.

Addendum 3/29: I met Adam tonight. On the one hand, he kept saying he was kidding in his post, but on the other hand, he kept making negative, broad sweeping generalizations about librarians. I don’t think I was able to convince him that librarians can be technology innovators. Let’s keep this thread moving.

The television trivia (but not trivial) game show Jeopardy! is searching for librarians to be contestants, according to LISNews.

Try outs might be in Boston … Hhhmmm …

Seeing the post on Berkman’s site about Wikimania’s Call for Participation reminded me that I haven’t yet posted it here. The deadline to submit proposals for workshops and tutorials is a week from Thursday: March 30. The deadline for presentations, panels, and the like is Saturday, April 15.

Yes, I am involved in the planning for Wikimania. You might be hearing more about it here as we ramp up to the weekend of August 4-6, when the conference will take place at Harvard Law School.

Oh, and speaking of Wikimania–we are still looking for volunteers of all sorts. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist mentioning that. ; ) )

Mmmmmm a spaghetti sauce recipe from Scott, who admits to reading his aggregator in the kitchen sometimes and solving tech problems while cooking. I wonder if I’ll ever have time again to cook … I also find it’s a good time to ponder and sometimes brainstorm and solve problems.

One of my apple crisp variations is floating around the Net somewhere …

beSpacific includes this Wall Street Journal article about a ruling in a copyright case against Google last week. A federal judge decided Google’s activities related to Snodgrass Publishing Group do not violate any copyright laws. The article, which is available for free, summarizes a few other recent cases concerning Google and copyright.

It’s that time of year when I speak to a journalism class about doing research. In two hours, I should cover a lot of the basics and important stuff, like specific sources, public records, what resources are available through their local libraries (Gary Price shared a great anecdote about this during his talk), using libraries and archives (Thanks for the really cool archives link, Garrett!), some hints on running good searches, and how to evaluate resources. I will probably talk about blogs, feeds, and Wikipedia–not just because I’m into them, but because they can be risky sources.

When the instructor and I were parsing out what I should cover, we discussed how some of the students might not be too ready to ask for help with their class assignments because of just the general hesitancy some people have about asking for help and some students might think asking for help with the assignments is cheating. I’m going to remind them–at least I hope it’s a reminder–that librarians are here to help people.

Any one want to remind me what else I should cover?

I don’t think I’ve posted my outline here in the past, but I might do it this year.

School Library Journal published a piece by Andy Carvin on the Digital Divide and why it’s dangerous that it’s no longer in the forefront of people’s minds.

sj reports the English Wikipedia has its millionth article.