jonesy
A Wicked Kendragon
See? This is educational!
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Educational Benefits of RPGs?
- Thread starter harpy
- Start date
See? This is educational!
RPGs are not educational because they help you learn; they're educational because they lead you to hang out on forums full of overeducated pedants.
GregChristopher
First Post
RPGs are not educational because they help you learn; they're educational because they lead you to hang out on forums full of overeducated pedants.
You win the thread! Hooray!
Just as it bothers me how some people cannot make a presentation without Powerpoint, it bothers me how much hatred there is for Powerpoint being spewed here.
Just like any other method of presenting something, Powerpoint has strengths and weaknesses. On the pro side, it can display a lot of information very quickly; on the con side, it can display information too quickly for your audience to understand. On the pro side, it can provide animations and diagrams that you could never produce on a chalkboard; on the con side, it can quickly become cluttered with meaningless charts and distracting transitions. On the pro side, it allows you to move a presentation from one computer to another with portability not seen on any hard media; on the downside, it locks you into using projectors and computers. The list goes on and on...
... and the same list exists for every other form of presentation media, ever. There are always some situations that a form of media is ideal for, and situations where it is inappropriate. You must always consider the audience, the surroundings, the subject matter, the skills of the presenter, and the resources available.
I believe the Afghanistan Powerpoint link given above is the perfect example of people blaming the messenger. The slide shown is a chart of the interactions between every major power and resource in the longest running war America has ever seen. This chart is not complicated because Powerpoint is a bad program. It is complicated because it is graphically mapping a ridiculously complicated situation. When the military states "When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war" they are absolutely correct, because then they'll actually understand how to control every aspect of the war they're fighting. Blaming the complications on the media that shows you how little you know is doing nothing but digging the hole deeper.
Powerpoint is a tool. I happens to be a very powerful tool. Learn how and when to use it properly, and you will be a good teacher. If you let a few bad users prejudice you against using it, you're holding yourself back just as much as if you used it poorly.
jonesy
A Wicked Kendragon
Could Power Point Presentations Be Stifling Learning?
That study blames animation. It might be possible that Powerpoint is less effective because the teachers try to dazzle students with their Powerpoint skills, instead of actually focusing on teaching.
That study blames animation. It might be possible that Powerpoint is less effective because the teachers try to dazzle students with their Powerpoint skills, instead of actually focusing on teaching.
Not necessarily true. Using it poorly could hold you back less than not using it at all. It could also hold you back more than not using it at all. If the latter is the case, you shouldn't use it until you learn to use it well, and it's not clear where you go to learn, or how you determine that you have, in fact, learned.
As for the military slide--that's PowerPoint badly used. Not because the data on the slide is incorrect but because it is useless as presented. It conveys nothing of value to the viewer; the human brain cannot possibly assimilate such a graph all at once, and the slide does little to indicate which are the key relationships. If that graph were up on a whiteboard in Central Command, for people to refer to and study and analyze in depth, it might be useful. On a slide in a presentation, it is worthless, unless the goal is to convey what a massive tangle the situation is.
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This one is not universally agreed upon. It is also generally acceptable for proper nouns that end in S to just use the apostrophe: ...the fallen Angels' psychic powers...
In this, as far as I can tell, consistency is more important than which form is exactly correct. Choose one, and stick with it.
That's why I said "common practice." I agree that consistency is the most important thing here.
Sorry it bothers you, but my understanding of the processes of learning tells me that for teaching, it is pretty much universally worse than writing the notes yourself on a board as you speak. The basic way to get your audience to ignore and fail to retain your high points is to put them in a Power Point slide.
Humans simply retain more when another human is actively engaged in the act of presenting the information - the separation of the content from the person delivering it that is inherent in all Power Point is a hindrance to absorption of the information.
If, for some reason, you can have Power Point presentations but lack the ability to write for your audience, then it might be a useful last resort, I guess. Whether it has value in non-teaching scenarios, I cannot say.
Power Point is a tool. It has strengths and weaknesses, but that doesn't mean it is good for all purposes, or that you can always find a good way to use it. If I'm assembling a computer, I need to drive machine screws. A hammer's a great tool in a general sense, but for my specific task it is not helpful.
Yes. But both my given and family names end in S, and in grade school they hammered the apostrophe-only version into me, so I felt an odd compulsion to mention it.
