Chad is giving more “Powerpoint technique” tips over on his blog.
I’d like to give a few tips of my own:
- Learn to give a good 55 minute chalkboard (or whiteboard) talk first. Only then learn about how to give a talk with a computera.
- Powerpoint?! Don’t use Powerpoint, for goodness sake! Use Keynoteb!!
-cvj
[aRegardless of program you are using to project the talk. And am I the only one who hates it that many people refer to any computer talk as “powerpoint”? I’ve gotten to the point that I just pretend not to have heard them…
bWhy? So many reasons. A few:- Keynote is beautiful and simple and incredibly powerful at doing a few simple things extraordinarily well. As it is not over-packaged and templated, your presentation does not end up automatically looking like a standard awful-looking Powerpoint presentation, which is a bonus right there. Combine it with something like Equation Service (installed in a few seconds if you already have TeX), and you are dragging and dropping beautifully LaTeX-ed equations (along with movies, graphs, animations and the usual other stuff) into the program (and a wide variety of other mac applications) to make a good presentation in seconds. If you don’t have a mac, Keynote alone makes it worthwhile to buy one if you are giving lots of talks, and teaching.
Speed, cleanliness, smart design, and ease of use – for powerful results. That’s the hallmark of a program like Keynote. My particular commercial is over now.]
Another advice: save your presentation as jpg and then into YOUR DIGITAL CAMERA as a backup. If the computer fails, you can still attach the camera to the projector using its video output, and you have saved the day.
There are many problems with chalkboard talk beyong what Chad points out, the first of which is the chalk itself (chalk dust everywhere, including one’s lungs I suspect). I do agree with the basic point that learning basic things like pacing is done best that way, and then one can move on to more efficient media (like ugly scribbling on tablet PC).
Learn to give a good 55 minute chalkboard (or whiteboard) talk first. Only then learn about how to give a talk with a computer.
I hear this a lot, and it’s interesting to note that it’s nearly always from theorists. I fact, the “nearly” is a hedge– I don’t recall ever having an experimentalist tell me that chalk talks are the way to go, though I’m sure three or four will pop up now.
Chalk is just not an adequate medium for presenting graphs of quantitative data. If you’re talking about experimental results, there’s no substitute for being able to project actual data graphs for the audience.
I forgot: Bullet points suck!!!
LaTeX beamer.sty rulez!
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@Keynote Rocks:
You don’t get it — I liked it that way!
😉
Learning how to give a “chalk talk” first is still a very good idea. I have more fun when speaking with chalk and a blackboard (or the slick xylene equivalent) than with any other visual aid.
I gave a Math Colloquium at a liberal arts college in LA County a couple of weeks ago, directed to both undergraduates and faculty, and somebody said afterwards, “You know, almost everybody’s using presentation software nowadays, but the few blackboard talks I’ve gone to recently have been excellent.” What I like most about the blackboard is that it forces the right pacing on you.
I would like to Clifford, but I am afraid, would I have to get a new mp3 player? a new cell phone? how about a toothbrush?
OK, have to run, my breakling is over.
>There was a day when I drew each slide in GIMP, copying my equations from LaTeX output, and then assembling the whole thing into a PDF
You must then be using linux, eh? I am always so sorry to hear…. Under Nextstep, the predecessor of Mac OS X, things were done much smoother than that already 10+ years ago….WYSIWYG TeX typesetting right into the slides, etc. Keynote and other “Cocoa” apps under OSX can do this today too, with gadgets like LaTeXIt etc. Adobe products are much less useful in this respect (eg no re-editing of TeX formulas by a mouse click). Something that comes close under Windows (as far this is at all possible under that OS), is a plugin for Powerpoint that also allows re-editing TeX formulas.
Moshe… but it is such a *wonderful* all! Join us!
-cvj
One of the other petpeeves that makes your first recommendation so much more relevant: the people who hand out a stapled set of the slides they are showing in their powerpoint (and other format) presentations. I am prone to tuneout during those sessions rather than stay involved and focussed. Learning to present material on a whiteboard (and even after 35 years in classrooms that is not always easy) opens inquiry and dialog with attendees, whereas clicking through to the next window tends to alienate. When i retired four years ago, i was really starting to enjoy working with the interactive/electronic whiteboard technologies (the better of both worlds)
There was a day when I drew each slide in GIMP, copying my equations from LaTeX output, and then assembling the whole thing into a PDF. I still find that drawing in pencil and scanning in for later GIMP work is the easiest way to make figures beyond box schematics and graphs.
My issue with Mac applications is that it is all or nothing, any way I could use Keynote without completely changing my lifestyle? (e.g. on my tablet PC?)
Ease of layout springs to mind. I want something very visually intuitive when I am preparing something that is primarily visual. I want immediate access to the look and feel of my canvas. So I like a place where I can just drop stuff in and move things around. I find that LaTeX-driven presenations all too often end up looking like you’re just reading the person’s paper with them…. unless the preparer is very careful to avoid that.
But whatever works for you is what you should use. But the primary thing to do is make sure that it follows the principles of a good chalk talk.
-cvj
Why not just use LaTeX with the seminar package to create PDF presentations?
If you are going to do presentations, I recommend looking at “Presentation Zen” and reading “Beyond Bulletpoints.” Just a thought.
Hi Amara…
I consider it all “Evil” too! This is the root of my first piece of advice, which I consider paramount:- If someone can’t give a good talk…. a computer just makes things worse.
Keynote is a great tool for preparing stuff simply that later gets exported (beautifully) to Acrobat. These days, I typically walk to class with nothing but my keys, which contain a pdf file of my lecture. (When I want to do more elaborate things (multilayered builds, etc.. more often in public lectures or colloquiua) then I keep the full Keynote functionality.)
Cheers!
-cvj
Hi Clifford, I see a non-trivial number of people today giving their presentations in Acrobat, which has advantages in that the Reader is available freely, everywhere, and the math typesetting looks gorgeous. I know some people who object to the idea of being bound to buggy and expensive software (Microsoft) or software that is fixed to one operating system (Apple). I’m not obsessive about presentation software, but since I buy most of my work software out of my own pocket, I don’t like to spend very much… Generally for portability and exchangeability of presentations and cost, Acrobat does a good job.
A related comment about PowerPoint (yes, you know I use it too), comes from Edward Tufte, who calls it ‘Evil’.. ! His arguments against using it are generally that it elevates format over content, encouraging a poor writing style and a poor integrity of data presentation. Tufte has written extensively about the “Cognitive Style of Powerpoint” in his latest two books. So then, another perspective.