Class Schedule
21 Aug | intro
23 Aug | clients
28 Aug | servers
30 Aug | networks
04 Sep | basics lab
06 Sep | structural layer
11 Sep | presentational layer
18 Sep | working with layers
20 Sep | behavior layer
25 Sep | images & design
27 Sep | website lab
02 Oct | object layers
02 Oct | graphics
09 Oct | document markup lab
11 Oct | spreadsheets, formulas & functions
16 Oct | thoughts about data display
18 Oct | Fall Break
23 Oct | database tools
25 Oct | spreadsheets lab
30 Oct | relational databases
01 Nov | tables
06 Nov | relationships
08 Nov | input & output
13 Nov | SQL
15 Nov | complex queries
20 Nov | databases lab |
next session
22 Nov | Thanksgiving
27 Nov | presentation design
29 Nov | presentation delivery
04 Dec | presentation lab
13 Dec | 0800-1100 | final in class presentation
This work
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
home & schedule | class blog | syllabus | contact | grades
Enjoy a happy and safe Thanksgiving
PowerPoint: anathema or boon? by Juan Dürsteler, 10 Nov 2003
... my experience is that whenever one interacts with the audience, asking for or showing them examples close to their experience the presentation is more lively and the message reaches them better. In the end, our answer to the question which we began this article with, is that PowerPoint is neither anathema nor boon, it’s just a tool with which it’s easy to give bad presentations, but when properly used, can help us to get a message across. Doing it well or badly is something that depends on us.
things hadn't improved by the time of the 9th International Conference on Information Visualisation in 2005. Note especially his comments on the use of PowerPoint.
More than half of the presentations I have attended had slides that abused PowerPoint in its more inefficient and less visual way: lots of bullet points almost literally read by the presenter. It's clear that while you read the slides you barely pay attention to what the speaker is saying, and if you listen to the speaker, reading is out of the question (what is then the need for a slide?) This is a mortal sin in a conference like this, where we have seen certainly other excellent presentations centered on the visual contents of what the speaker was saying.