Ben Wildboer shows how he used some ideas he found online (including some from yours truly!) to upgrade a slide deck about basic Earth structure. His blog post includes an “Extreme Makeover” like before and after look at his entire slide deck.

Ben’s immediate observation distills everything I’ve been trying to convey as succinctly as I’ve seen it done:

There were several students that expressed regret at the demise of the bullet points. It’s easier for them to just copy down exactly what it says (of course it is, they don’t have to actually pay attention or comprehend to do that). How well they’ve been trained by their past experiences!

Ah yes. Undoing years of damage done by the ubiquitous bullet point. Challenging, to say the least. But definitely a battle worth fighting.

Go check out Ben’s slide decks. And the rest of his blog while you’re there. He’s off to a great start!!

The cause, of course, being to rise to the challenge of bringing students engaging, top-quality instruction.

I’m truly humbled by all of the positive attention my “Presentation on Presentations” has received since I published it one week ago. I’m especially grateful to those who have linked it on their own blogs and increased the potential reach for this work.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating that there is nothing in that presentation that I didn’t learn from following in the footsteps of those who have covered this stuff in far greater detail (Dan, Merlin, Guy, Seth, Garr…). I have merely synthesized from the work of others and distilled it down into a presentation that I gave to a group of faculty.

My goal was to whet their appetites. Not to “convert” them to “my” way of thinking, so much as to show them that there are other (better?) ways to use presentation software — to share the possibilities.

I had a limited amount of time and there is a LOT of information out there. I didn’t know if I’d have another opportunity to share this material with them so I wanted to be sure to include as much as possible in the hour that I had. I wanted to leave them hungry to learn more and to some extent I think that I was successful.

Thanks to all who have commented and linked!

Sequence : Gene of my life
Originally uploaded by hawkexpress

First, have you seen this? I thought I’d seen some complex organizational schemes, but this one is incredible. Elegant in its simplicity, yet amazingly comprehensive. [via 43F]

Second, if you’re in graduate school and you use a Mac, you need to check out Schoolhouse 2.1. All I can say about this app is, “Wow!” I’m using it to track assignments and the like in my two doctoral classes this term and I’m thoroughly impressed.

Thinks:

• My gadget-geekiness has finally met its match. Check out Principal Miller’s most recent podcast – this time a recording of a staff development on (You guessed it!) podcasting.
• My copies of iWork and iLife ‘08 arrived on Friday. I have got to learn Pages.
• Check out my August post for LeaderTalk titled, Word up. (Those of us who grew up in the 80s will be able to hear Cameo singing it now…)

Quote for the week:
“You don’t own a TV? What’s all your furniture pointed at?”
– Joey Tribbiani

I have to get this off my chest. I can’t be the only one who’s bugged by the fact that Apple’s recent update to OS X 10.4.9 moved the OS to version 10.4.10. Anyone who’s ever taught math (and evidently whoever writes the logic for Apple’s installer programs) knows that 10.4.10 = 10.4.1 which is clearly a step backwards.

Maybe they should have considered 10.4.95 or 10.4.9.1. I’m sure this is commonly done with version numbers, but anything would have been better (and more mathematically correct!) than going from 10.4.9 to 10.4.10.

I don’t think this will detract from the iPhone hype today, but it sure feels good to get that out of my system.