I've got my doubts it's happened to me

[austin_dern]

New computer updates (parent division): My mother wanted to know if there were any way to convert a Keynote presentation into a Powerpoint presentation, because she uses these projected slides to provide structure to her classes, and she discovered in lecture this week that the computers the university has don't read Keynote. She'd have plugged in her new computer to the overhead projector happily except that the MacBook Pro and the projector both have female ports for that bit of business and she hadn't considered where the plug to go from computer to projector might be. For the first class, mostly a review of the traditional first class subjects (``Don't plagiarize essays, you idiots, do you think teachers never heard of Google?''), this wasn't an inconvenience, but next week as they get into the real subject matter she needs this year's slides.

I thought there was no way there wasn't a Save As Powerpoint option on Keynote, but my mother said she couldn't find it, so while she was off taking care of something I took the laptop in hand to find the right export options. It turned out to be one of those traditional platform-migration problems, the thing you learn so early you forget anyone has to learn it: the save-as-Powerpoint option is, initially, concealed in the Save As dialogue box along with other options visible only when you click the little blue downward-facing triangle. With that shown, she's satisfied for her presentation needs and probably will go on to understand the little triangle so well someday she'll forget how it works when someone else is trying to learn How The Mac Thinks.

My father has been having a lot of fun with the iPod Touch, between listening to Internet radio stations or podcasts, and playing this video game where you tap a sheep to send it flying ever-higher, and the ``bubble level'' app. He particularly likes showing that to one of his favorite clients, as he can use it to prove that (a) the kitchen table is not perfectly level, and (b) there's nothing to be done about that.

Trivia: The G I Bill of Rights initially provided that the Veterans Administration would guarantee half of a mortgage of up to $2,000. Source: An Empire Of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power, John Steele Gordon.

Currently Reading: The Walter Lantz Story, Joe Adamson.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

because she uses these projected slides to provide structure to her classes

I admit I had to laugh a little at the idea of needing to explain what PowerPoint is used for in classes. It's pretty nearly the default where I work.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I feared this. I'm falling so far behind in teaching technology I still think of computer projections as new-fangled things of barely needed fangleism.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Well, there are certainly those who think PowerPoint is an insidious evil that makes people stupider. I didn't witness this, but I heard it from a fellow grad student who was there. A professor at MSU (someone who was on my committee, though that has no bearing on this story) was talking about a PowerPoint presentation that had been given by a speaker (either a job candidate or a colloquium invitee; I can't remember which). He said: "Every PowerPoint presentation I've ever seen was shit. Except that one. It was shit-minus."

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Wow, and yeow. That's a harsh thing to tell either a candidate or a speaker. (I suppose if it was an invited speaker and there was some existing relationship he could say something like that without it being devastating to the ego.)

There was some public discussion a while back about whether the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster could have been averted had all the relevant data not been squeezed into PowerPoint stylings which, it was argued, obscured the case to be made. I'm not sure about that, since the specifics of bad-decision-making were eerily similar to those behind the Challenger disaster pre-dating PowerPoint.

But while it's true there was a badly made presentation (using slides) that might have, if it were more effective, gotten the Challenger launch postponed to a (likely) safer launch temperature, the fault wasn't so much that the presentation was on slides as that the presentation didn't condense the relevant data into a compelling argument. No medium can help (or hurt) if you aren't showing the stuff that makes your case most convincingly.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Oh, he didn't say it to the person who gave the presentation. He said it to some other people later on in a meeting (sort of in passing).

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's easier to take, then. Snarky comments about a bad presentation will always belong with us.