Tufte:
1. Are you in agreement that Power Point is inadequate for most of the presentations given today, that is, not designed for presentation of cogent thought? Is there a better presentation tool?
2. Has the Power Point tool helped or hurt the development of effective presentation skills? How do you teach effective presentation skills, or how do you develop a meaningful presentation?
Kress & Van Leeuwen:
3. What is semiotics? (really!!)
4. As writers, do you see yourselves bringing other semiotic resources into your work to broaden meaning? When is it more (or less) appropriate to use other genres to supplement meaning?
5. As a writer, do you resist multimodal discourse? Does using other semiotic resources cheat the written word by lessening the dependence on eloquent phrasing, vocabulary or descriptive prose?
6. Do you agree or disagree with Kress and Van Leeuwen in Chapter 6 (111). First and foremost we have tried to show that meaning is made in many different ways, always, in the many different modes and media which are co-present in a communicational ensemble. This entails that a past (and still existent) common sense to the effect that meaning resides in language alone – or, in other versions of this, that language is the central means of representing and communicating even though there are ‘extra-linguistic’, ‘para-linguistic’ things going on as well – is simply no longer tenable, that it never really was, and certainly is not now.
Note: my observations on Tufte and Kress & Van Leeuwen are below this entry.
To respond to number 1-
Our school district/administration is currently having huge conversations about the fact that power point has become a babysitting tool in the classroom- teachers are just sitting back and teaching through power points exclusively, and there is no real interaction human, or otherwise with the text, information etc. Students are not even required to write anything down as teachers are now just printing the notes off of the power point!
I agree to a point that this is not good, but I also feel that power point is at times very interesting and can be a (somewhat) lively way to present material that may be overly boring (say, in a lecture) The key is being able to be properly trained and excited to use this technology, which some teachers are not. It’s a good tool for students who are put off by books, etc. And I find students love to create their own power points- which takes a lot of thought..
I’m 32 and never had the experience of being taught with a power point, butI personally feel our society is being “power pointed” to death at times. Not sure about the corporate world- I’d like to hear thoughts on this as well!
And one other thing, my pet peeve is when people turn the power point into an excuse to just stand up there and read to me word for word what it says- there is nothing more demeaning or annoying!
All we need are ‘key’ ideas and a lively presenter to make a good presentation- not a reading tutor!
Re: semiotics ,see http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html for an excellent online introduction
Amen to Unshrouded’s last statement. Good questions, too.