While I think bulletpoints have their places, I remember distinctly wanting to move in a more visual direction when I first put this together. Unfortunately, as any of my students can tell you, my lack of ability in the visual arts is legendary. Stick figures are about as detailed as I can get.

Mulling that over in my head, I asked myself, “Why not just go with stick figures, then?” Several hours later, the first of my Stick Figure Theatre presentations was born, and it was a hit with my Honors Brit Lit class. I share it with you folks not to garner e-pats on the back, but rather to give hope to the artistically disinclined that with a little creativity, even an utter lack of talent can’t stop you!

For the teachers asking themselves, “So what does this mean for me?”, the biggest takeaway lesson I got was, “Less is more.” I could have made a 50-slide presentation with a million bulletpointed facts and gorgeous backgrounds (well, I couldn’t have, but someone else could have), but for some reason, I think the DIY ethic of this show struck a chord with my students. It certainly has none of the elegance of some of Dan’s stuff, and I’d never call it great art, but I think it has a bit of rough-around-the-edges appeal that you can’t get from a PowerPoint template.

It’s a timely lesson, as the New York Times recently ran a piece on the constant re-branding of merchandise in an effort to be more in our faces (and our students, as a major target demographic, bear the brunt of this). There’s something to be said today for simplicity in design – just because we have a million design tools at our disposal doesn’t mean we have to use them all (especially not all at once!). Just something to keep in mind as we prepare those first month of school and Back-to-School Night presentations.

Update, 8/14: If you’re reading this in a feedreader, there’s an embedded video that may not show up in your reader (it didn’t in mine, anyway) – come to the site to check it out.  Also, I realized after I uploaded that in the third from last slide, I mistakenly referred to Beckett as “Henry”.

Word to the wise: if you plan on doing a slidecast, you can upload your Powerpoint, OpenOffice Impress, or Keynote (as PDF) files to Slideshare, but you must find your own separate hosting site for the accompanying mp3. I’ve used MediaFire and MyDatabus for hosting and streaming in the past (and I highly recommend both those services), but for some reason, their servers didn’t play nicely with Slideshare. I had to post the narration mp3 to HotlinkFiles.com – it worked flawlessly from there, and best of all, it’s free (as are Mediafire and parts of MyDatabus)!

If you’d like to download this slideshow, you can do so directly from Slideshare.net. If you’d like a copy of my lecture notes or the “script” (and I do use that term loosely), leave a comment or Twitter me.

Addendum: Dave Sherman recommended in a comment that I check out Voicethread.com. I did, and I was impressed by how much more dynamic it is in function than Slideshare. Every service suits a purpose, but in my mind, I see more possibilities for collaborative student work at Voicethread. Check out Dave’s thoughts on his blog, then go to Voicethread and run the demo.

I can offer the following reflection – the slide show I’ll be putting up usually takes me anywhere between 3o-40 minutes to go through in class. I know that sounds like a long time, but that includes taking questions, asking questions, elaborating, etc. Still probably on the long side, though, as I never script these things, and just run from either my head or a list of bulletpointed notes.

After the first 1500 or so takes of my narration, I got tired of stumbling, bumbling, saying “ummm”, and all those other wonderful aspects of public speaking (I’m fine in front of an audience, just don’t get me in front of a mic), and wrote a quick script. Nothing fancy, just basically what I wanted to get across, in an informal, conversational tone. The total running time of the MP3 (pre-Slideshare syncing)?

6:43.

Again, this is without stopping for questions, repeating myself for those who didn’t hear, or anything like that, but holy cow – the demands and restrictions put on me by the audio recording forced me to trim this down to at least a quarter of its normal presentation time. I was planning on turning some of my lectures this year into podcasts, but was still a bit hung up on recording a 25-40 minute lecture. I wonder how short I can get THOSE with a little tightening of the script?

In class, I try to deliver material as seemingly “off the cuff” as possible – I know my stuff, and I don’t need or want to read from a script. I think that engages my kids; however, what comes off as stiff in person actually sounds much smoother in recording, and if I do make the leap to podcasts this year, I’ll do so without the trepidation of overly lengthy downloads – with the right script, I’ll probably be able to cover an entire movement in 10-15 minutes. Think about how much class time that’ll free up.

Before I rack out for the night (it’s been a long weekend), I want to give a heartfelt thank you to the folks who’ve visited and left comments so far. As I said before, I really am excited about the communal, collaborative element of blogging, and I’m heartened to know that what I’m putting out there is being seen. Looking forward to continuing the dialogue with all of you, both here and at your places! I have some thoughts on Twitter I’ll be fleshing out here later this week, as well as getting my slidecast up (hopefully).

Also, this story from Gizmodo [via Sci Fi Tech] makes me cringe on so many levels I can’t even begin to describe. I know there are tragic stories every year about parents leaving their kids in cars unattended, so I guess there’s a market need for these things, but… words fail. Having been a tired, stressed out, sleep-deprived father of a newborn, I can proudly say that I’ve never needed a keychain alarm to remind me that I’ve left my infant son alone in the car. Have we become this reliant on technology?

Actually, the more I roll this around my mind, how different is this from something like a baby monitor? We really valued having a little B&W video baby cam/monitor setup when our son was younger, and it still comes in handy from time to time. I still don’t think they’re equivalent, but maybe I should tone down the snark a little bit (naah). With another little one on the way, I’m still mindful of the role technology plays in our parenting. To me, utilizing the technology without letting it become a crutch is key, and my wife and I are still trying to strike that balance. I think this is true in teaching as well – use the technology, don’t let the technology use you.

This was just meant to be a two-line post about Slidecast.  I’m off to check the baby monitor.