Thursday 26 July 2012

Slideshare

It seems to me that the value of slideshare is the quality and relevance of the slideshows contained within it. I wonder if the more interesting/engaging presentations have less information in them... therefore making them less useful when discovered in such an arena. I really like the way that most people now use a lot of images and not so much text in presentations, and it seems like good practice is to convey much of the information orally with the slides as simply another input to keep people interested. However this has the disadvantage that when you look at the slideshow in isolation it may not actually tell you very much. So I think the value of accessing presentations via slideshare depends on what the presentation has been designed for and what the user's requirements are. I.e. if it's visually strong and text light then it may not work stand alone, unless it's very conceptual and intended to stimulate ideas perhaps. But it could work well as a refresher for a presentation you attended yourself. So if you missed the presentation, then in this case how much will the slideshow help you?

I think in terms of teaching support materials and online learning the slideshow needs to be able to make sense as standalone materials and then it really does rely on the right mix of text and visuals, so people don't lose interest. I have found it useful to be able to look at people's presentations online after I've been to them in person as part of the process of consolidating learning, so is there an advantage to posting them online rather than them being emailed round? Well I guess not having large files clog up your email... but also looking at the related slideshows could help with expanding learning, even just to the general level of who's talking about what in a certain field, getting to know the big names to watch.

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