For all the ranting people do about the evils of PowerPoint, it seems to me that people are missing the one bit of technology that is most responsible for incomprehensible presentations in science: the laser pointer.<\/p>\n
Having watched a bunch of student talks last week, I was reminded once again of just how useless laser pointers really are. Unless you have a really bright pointer, with a fresh set of batteries, the dot of light is almost completely invisible. And I have reasonably good (corrected) vision– I doubt that anybody who’s red-green colorblind can pick them up at all.<\/p>\n
The widespread use of laser pointers also encourages really static and dull presentations, allowing the speaker to stand fixed behind a podium thirty feet from the screen, and gesture vaguely and ineffectually at the screen. This is usually exceptionally futile, because at the distances between screen and computer in most classrooms, you need to be a ninja Zen master to hold a pointer steady enough to accurately point out any particular feature.<\/p>\n
If you want to point at the screen, point at the screen<\/strong>. Get a big stick, and use it. Walk away from the podium, move your arms around, physically indicate what’s going on in your slides. It’s ok if you don’t have a presentation remote (though it’s easier if you do, and can click through slides while standing and pointing)– moving back and forth between the screen and your computer or projector won’t irreparably damage the presentation, and gives you something to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For all the ranting people do about the evils of PowerPoint, it seems to me that people are missing the one bit of technology that is most responsible for incomprehensible presentations in science: the laser pointer. Having watched a bunch of student talks last week, I was reminded once again of just how useless laser… Continue reading Put Down the Laser Pointer<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}