Redhaired Librarian

Write-Up Coming Soon

I’m heading out camping with the family tonight, but if we get home early enough tomorrow, I hope to finish my write-up of the ALA session “Teaching Cataloging to School Library Media Specialists.”

And They’re Off!

I’ll have to put the distance education post on hold. I’m off to the MLA conference in a few hours! I hope to get internet access so I can start posting useful stuff on my resume site as an extra resource.

You’ll know me at MLA. I’m the one with the bun, glasses, and comfortable shoes. And I might be carrying a book.

Presentation Link Dump

Here are links to articles about presentations. I started with a link from a comment on Library Stuff and followed where it led. These articles include valuable things to think about when presenting. (They all dislike Power Point. But that’s to be expected since I was following links on other sites of people who dislike Power Point. I need to find some sites about good things you can do with presentation software.)

I find this subject fascinating. I had no idea there was such controversy over Power Point. Even more interesting is that they don’t seem to be talking about the way I intend to use the software, which is as a fancy slide projector, to show my charts, graphs, and screenshots.

How to Make Presentations, etc. This is a forum thread on the website of Edward Tufte, who lectures about visual information. It’s fascinating, although a bit heavy-handed in its “anything but PowerPoint” message. A lot of contributions from visitors over the past few years.

An article from the Chronicle about how to deliver the scholarly lecture. Again, anti-PowerPoint. But full of other goodies. I’m not giving a scholarly lecture, but I suspect many of these points will apply. I’m assuming the people who show up will be there because they want to see and hear interesting information about how libraries use weblogs and how their libraries could use weblogs (my research turned up only a couple of weblogs in Missouri public libraries, though I assume there are more than that.) That’s what I want to give them.

I will add more links to the bottom of this entry and change the date to reflect the addition. Original post: 10-23-2005 12:30am.

PP Again, in Response

Stephen Cohen of Library Stuff posted a response to those who responded to his earlier post about Power Point. He does have a good point about trying blogs and wikis for presentations, and in some situations, I think I would be willing to try. It would be helpful if presentation software had web browsing capabilities built in, although a creative designer could make a “slide show” on a website and get the best of both worlds. But with a presentation like mine, which is essentially about library weblogs within a specific time span, a blog-based presentation actually adds an extra, unnecessary layer of technology. I have no reason in this particular presentation to have live websites. I am discussing design of certain weblogs, but not navigation, since as I mentioned before, a majority of the blogs are on blogspot and use standard blogspot navigation. All I really need at this stage is a reliable screenshot. (If I continue my research on these blogs and add more, there might be a time when I analyze the design and navigation more closely, and will need the ability to show that in a presentation. Also, if I do a presentation about setting up a blog, that would need internet access as well.)

As for the upcoming presentation, we don’t even know for sure whether we’ll have internet access in the presentation area. It would be a major bummer to get there and not be able to access the presentation at all. Then there are issues of display websites changing URLs, redesigning (Census Factfinder, I’m looking at you!) or simply being temporarily unavailable because of Internet gremlins. These are factors that need to be more stable before online presentation aids become widespread.

Some of the professors we support at the university use web sites quite a lot in their lectures. I think it’s a great idea for the right presentation, but I also think it introduces too much chaos at this point for people to rely on it when they don’t need it.

It’s important to bring up these issues, though. Just because people might disagree doesn’t mean that there aren’t important points to be made. We constantly have to reevaluate our methods and make sure they still work.

Is Power Point Evil?

Stephen Cohen of Library Stuff says that he gets a round of applause when he tells the audience he doesn’t use Power Point. I’m trying to figure this out: is Power Point a synonym for all presentation software, or is it Power Point itself?

I do plan to use Power Point for my presentation. I have pie charts, a map, and some screenshots. I’m a very visual person. If I went to a presentation that was just someone talking for 20 minutes, I don’t think I would absorb anything. I have to see the words and pictures. Now, I don’t plan to use any special effects… as a trained broadcaster, I know that they’re usually overused and pretty lame… but I do plan to have my presentation outline on Power Point. I’m practicing to make sure I don’t tell my presentation to the screen. I’m checking out the projector Tuesday night, so my husband will see my presentation before I finish packing. Then my roommate at the hotel will probably get to see it at least once.

When I’m done, I plan to record a script of the presentation incorporating the best of what I did in my practices and the live presentation, and I want to make a movie file of it. I suppose that’s the same thing as the new presentations for iPods I’ve seen floating around today. But mine is for any computer. It’s for anyone who’s interested in library weblogs beyond the cheering.

In essence, I suspect Power Point is being blamed for the lack of sophistication in its users. I think it’s as good a product as any, and like any good product, it can be abused.

[To clarify: I'll be at the MLA conference next week. I'll post some thoughts tomorrow evening about doing presentations with blogs.]

Presentation Remote

I got my presentation remote today. Of course, I don’t have my presentation ready yet. I’m going to be prepared for anything from 15 to 30 minutes. We’re also preparing for a complete technological failure, so I need to have my graphs and charts ready for printing next week. Of course, I have a paper, a story, and an assignment due this weekend, and a six-hour class on Saturday. But. I’ll get there.