Re: Scanning problems

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

> > I would like to post my lecture transparencies to the web for my
> > students' benefit.
>
> Am I missing something?  You can use Powerpoint, which will run the same
> files on a Mac or one of those PC things, ;-) and it can save in html
> format to put up onto the web. another problem, however, will arise when
> your students attempt to print out all of your transparancies.  the time
> and ink used is considerable!

The transparencies I'm talking about here are those with my own
scrawls on them, made as I lecture. The idea is to convert them
to .pdf files, make them accessible, and let the students decide
whether or not to print them (which I do not advise). They seem
to fulfill the function of a security blanket more than anything
else, but the students are very happy to have them.

Physicists very infrequently use Powerpoint. In the last two
years I've seen only one Powerpoint talk given by a physicist
who used it to show video clips. The talk was not very good, and
he ran it from his PowerBook. There were also floodlights set up
for videotaping the talk, and the technical peripheranalia were
so distracting that I got very little of the content he intended
to convey (which was pedagogy rather than physics). I have seen
business types use Powerpoint this way too, but the visuals were
never very necessary, and their static nature would have suited
them well to prepared transparencies.

All these things boil down to the use of appropriate technology.
I don't need a G4 Mac to do most of what I do. I *could* use one
(and I do use a G3 in my astronomy lectures, to run Starry Night
Pro) of course, but the overhead and a few colored pens still
work well for most purposes.

Leigh