When I give talks and use PowerPoint (or something similar), there are two ways I use it.  One, I use it to display images that reinforce my point or that create a tension with my point, the idea being to stimulate interesting thoughts as I’m talking.  Two, I use it for organizing what I’m going to say.  While I do have bullet points, they are there to remind me what to say.  So they’re more for me than they are for my audience, though I do also think of them when I jot those bullet points down.  I’ve seen people use PowerPoint in amazingly wonderful ways.  And I’ve been to talks with zero slides that have been amazing (many of the TED talks have few if any slides).  And I’ve seen PowerPoint presentations where the presenter read the bullets and nearly killed us all.  And I’ve seen talks without slides where slide would have been good, and have even seen one such talk where the person apologized for not having graphic, suddenly realizing that we would grasp his ideas better if we had a visual.

So PowerPoint’s not all bad, but like any technology, it’s not going to instantly solve all your problems.  It can’t make a bad presentation suddenly good.  Good presentations are more than the slides.  They take thought and practice and real consideration for how best to get ideas across.

According to a recent column by David Brooks reporting on a paper about the reading habits of people on the Internet, people may not be living in the echo chambers we thought they were.  The researchers showed that people tend to travel widely over the Internet and not stay within predefined communities.  The researchers don’t necessarily suggest that politics isn’t polarized; they simply say that it’s not because of the Internet.  One of the biggest arguments I get from people about the Internet is this one, that it’s polarized and it’s therefore bad to send students there for information because it’s all ideologically skewed.  To which I say, of course it is! And that makes it great fodder for analyzing arguments and for understanding what bias really is.  And I also think that we haven’t even begun to understand people’s Internet habits.  I think this study shows us, though, that people like variety and the Internet offers that more readily than tv.  Although I myself tend to watch “liberal,” news shows, I get tired of just hearing one point of view.  Unfortunately, I can’t switch over quickly and find a different view on the topic at hand while watching the show.  But on the Internet, a quick search can take me to multiple points of view.  I suspect I’m not the only one who does that kind of thing.  It will be interesting to see what more comes out of studies like these.  The researchers point out that they don’t have access to specific content people read or certainly not what they think of it or how they’re using it.  But maybe one day, we’ll figure that out.

Last week, Ning announced it would no longer be free.  I’m personally part of two active Ning networks and it will be a shame to see these go.  Yes, they can, and probably will, navigate elsewhere, but after accumulating such a following and so much content, something will be lost and it will take time to build that up again.  We all understand that these services need to make money somehow.  As I understood it, Ning used ads for revenue and some people already paid for the service in order to get rid of the ads.  Teachers and professors often flock to services like these when their course management systems can’t meet their needs.  And, of course, an individual teacher or faculty member isn’t going to shell out too much cash for these things.  And schools often won’t pay for them if they’re already paying for a course management system.   It seems to me there ought to be a small pool of money for things like this.  While I’d like to see social sites remain free, there are costs involved in running them, and it might be nice to give some financial love to the smaller companies out there rather than giants like Blackboard or Google (much as I love Google).  Course management systems serve a purpose, for sure, and some people like them, but education and learning shouldn’t be one size fits all and if a teacher wants to go outside of the system, they should be able to.

Barring schools creating a budget for alternatives, what else is out there?  Thankfully, Free Technology for Teachers, one of my favorite blogs, has a list.  Anyone else have potential alternatives?  I’d love to hear them.