[Phys-L] graphics software +- wasting paper ... or not

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 09/02/2014 07:13 PM, Anthony Lapinski wrote:

>> Interesting discussion!

Agreed!

On 09/03/2014 05:51 AM, Richard Tarara wrote:
> Power Point is a tool, and as such can be used well or badly.

Yes!

> Here it is 'to each his own' but used well Power Points can be an 
> effective tool and may actually save some paper--or not!

Yes!!!

Memo from the keen-grasp-of-the-obvious department:  Not all
kids are alike.  Not all grown-ups are alike, either.
  a) There are some people who do best taking no notes at
   all during a presentation.  This frees up time to /think/
   about what is being said.
  b) There are others who do best with a printout in front
   of them, so they can annotate it, write questions in the
   margin, et cetera.
  c) There are some who do just fine following along on
   their phones.
  d) There are those who do best starting with a pad of
   blank paper and taking notes as fast as they can during
   the presentation.
  *) et cetera.

People in all categories can view and/or print stuff 
from the web afterwards, if/whenever they want.

Making printouts for the folks in category (b) does not
constitute a "waste" of paper.  It's a reasonable use 
of paper. Paper is cheap.  Printouts that serve only a 
short-term purpose still serve a purpose.  OTOH making 
enough printouts for the whole audience would be a 
waste, because category (b) is a minority.

I personally am not in category (d).  I don't understand
category (d), but that's OK;  there are lots of things
in this world I don't understand, but that does not make
them any less real.  I have nowhere near enough confidence
to say that (d) is wrong.  I know some very, very smart
people who use this system.  Their notes have no chance
of capturing highly-accurate graphs and detailed diagrams
that may appear during the presentation.  In many cases
the note-takers never look at their notes afterwards, 
which only deepens my non-understanding.  Evidently the
/process/ of note-taking serves some purpose.

I try to be as respectful as possible of (d) and all
the other categories.  The tricky bit is that when 
I am presenting, I am not willing to slow down to 
the point where the average note-taker can keep up, 
because that would be a 3X slowdown, and that would
be unfair to the other folks in the audience.

=================

This is an important discussion, and we will have to
discuss it again, because it is a moving target.

In particular, more-or-less everybody agrees that
having a bunch of people sitting in a large room
listening to a prepared presentation is not logical.
It is not "quality time".  The more-logical alternative
is called "flipping the classroom".

This reminds me of what Mark Twain said about the weather:
Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about 
it.  I understand why;  flipping the classroom is hard.
Making videos is an eeeeenormous pain.  I am hoping this
will get easier over time.  There is tremendous upside 
potential here.

=================================

Here's another issue, less interesting but still somewhat
important:

> Power Point is a tool, and as such can be used well or badly.

Yes!

The same goes for any other presentation software.
 *) Not every sports drink is Gatorade.
 *) Not every tissue is Kleenex.
 *) Not every copier is Xerox.
 *) Not every graphics program is PowerPoint.

We agree that any tool can be used well or badly.  This 
starts with the choice of which tool to use.

On 09/03/2014 09:18 AM, Bill Nettles posted a long list
of useful tools.  Taking another small step in that
direction, let me mention that in addition to writing
a LaTeX document that incorporates SVG diagrams, you
can also go the other direction:  You can treat inkscape
or some other SVG editor as the "primary" tool for each
slide, and use LaTeX to typeset a couple of paragraphs
or complex equations which are converted to SVG format
and incorporated into the slide.

Words matter.  Throwing around the word "powerpoint" might 
well give naïve students -- and others -- the impression 
that Microsoft Windows + Microsoft Office is the only game
in town ... which it isn't.  Not even close.

Also, file formats matter.  The ".ppt" file format is in some
ways related but in super-important ways distinct from the 
"PowerPoint" software package itself.  For starters, note 
that the package can emit multiple different file formats.
Note the contrast in the last item here:

 ++ The Portable Document Format (.pdf) can be expected to
  work cross-platform, as the name implies.  It not generally
  editable after publication, not in any nice way.

 ++ SVG graphics can be expected to work cross-platform,
  and are "open" in the sense that they can be imported,
  re-used, re-purposed, and /edited/ by a wide range of
  tools.

 ++ Well-written javascript can be expected to work cross-
  platform.

 ++ Standards-compliant HTML is portable and editable.
  I used the w3c validator
    http://validator.w3.org/
  to make sure the countdown timer / alarm / split timer 
  thing was valid as HTML4 and as HTML5.

 -- In contrast, the .ppt file format does *NOT* work cross-
  platform.  It does not work on my Linux laptop and nor on
  my Android phone.

If you're going to distribute stuff to students, please do not 
require them to buy software from a particular vendor.  As RT
said, "to each his own."  As Chairman Mao said, "let many 
flowers bloom."

Whenever possible, communicate stuff in an open, standards-
compliant format.  This includes saving stuff (communicating
from one time to another) as well as distributing stuff
(communicating from one place to another).