This is an archived page. Images and links on this page may not work. Please visit the main page for the latest updates.

 
 
 
Read my book, TEACHING BEAUTY IN DeLILLO, WOOLF, AND MERRILL (Palgrave Macmillan; forthcoming), co-authored with Jennifer Green-Lewis. VISIT MY BRANCH CAMPUS AT INSIDE HIGHER ED





UD is...
"Salty." (Scott McLemee)
"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Friday, October 05, 2007

More Student Testimony
(As If More Were Needed)
On Professors Who Use
PowerPoint




'I think every college student knows what it’s like to sign up for a class at the beginning of the semester and get excited at the prospect that it could really be an interesting, informative and maybe even fun experience.

Then you get into that class only to realize the professor has no desire to teach, only to hold you hostage for an hour and 15 minutes, or more, and talk at you.

That’s right - not with you or even to you, but at you.

I’m not asking for my professors to bring sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll to class every day. All I’m saying is that there is no stronger sedative than when all I have to stare at and listen to for over an hour is a 52 slide PowerPoint presentation, with my professor sounding less interested in the topic than their students are.'



It occurs to UD that a sort of perfect culmination of current classroom technology is the PowerPoint professor and his laptop student, one hunched over his slides, the other hunched over his screen, each unaware of the other's existence.

Makes for a nice quiet classroom.
Posted at: 10/05/2007 05:57:00 AM